An aide to Mayor Eric Adams who served as his longtime liaison to the Turkish group has turned in opposition to him and is cooperating with the corruption investigation into Mr. Adams and his 2021 marketing campaign, in response to three individuals with data of the matter.
The cooperation of the aide, Rana Abbasova, may symbolize a major growth within the broad corruption inquiry, which has centered partly on whether or not Mr. Adams’s marketing campaign conspired with the Turkish authorities to funnel unlawful overseas donations into marketing campaign coffers — and whether or not Mr. Adams pressured Hearth Division officers to log out on a brand new high-rise Turkish consulate regardless of security issues.
It was unclear what info Ms. Abbasova, the director of protocol for the Mayor’s Workplace for Worldwide Affairs, offered to the federal authorities. However she has been concerned in or has had data of a few of Mr. Adams’s dealings with Turkish authorities officers and businessmen, in response to emails. She additionally helped coordinate occasions and conferences with members of the Turkish group in New York and overseas and organized a few of his journey, accompanying him on two official journeys to Turkey, information present.
Initially from Azerbaijan, Ms. Abbasova, 41, had labored for Mr. Adams for about 4 years within the Brooklyn borough president’s workplace earlier than he turned mayor. She started speaking with the workforce of F.B.I. brokers and federal prosecutors conducting the corruption investigation within the weeks after the F.B.I. searched her dwelling on Nov. 2. On the identical day, brokers additionally searched the properties of the mayor’s chief fund-raiser and a former Turkish Airways government.
Just like the mayor and others below scrutiny within the investigation, Ms. Abbasova has not been formally accused of wrongdoing. It’s unclear whether or not she has signed a proper cooperation cope with federal prosecutors in alternate for leniency or whether or not she’s going to plead responsible to any crimes in reference to the alleged overseas donation scheme. However she has been offering federal authorities with details about the issues they’re investigating.
Her lawyer, Rachel Maimin, declined to touch upon Monday, as did spokesmen for the U.S. legal professional’s workplace and the F.B.I.
One of many attorneys representing Mr. Adams, Brendan R. McGuire, mentioned in a press release that Ms. Abbasova’s cooperation was “not a brand new or significant growth.” He famous that officers within the Adams administration had earlier shared info with federal prosecutors about what they described as improper actions taken by Ms. Abbasova after the search of her dwelling.
“It’s our understanding that Ms. Abbasova has been speaking to investigators since her improper conduct was reported by the administration in November,” the assertion mentioned.
Individuals with data of the matter have mentioned that her actions had not directly concerned speaking to a different aide about communications.
For the reason that investigation turned public, Mr. Adams has denied wrongdoing and mentioned he all the time tells his workers to comply with the regulation.
4 days after looking the properties of Ms. Abbasova and the others, F.B.I. brokers approached Mr. Adams on the road after an occasion at New York College in Greenwich Village. They requested his safety element to step apart, climbed into his automotive with him, handed him a court-authorized warrant and seized his digital units. Federal brokers and prosecutors have made few public strikes since then.
The warrant for the search of the Brooklyn dwelling of the mayor’s chief fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs, detailed no less than a number of the attainable crimes that F.B.I. brokers and prosecutors from the U.S. legal professional’s workplace for the Southern District of New York had been inspecting as a part of the corruption inquiry.
It mentioned they had been looking for proof to assist potential expenses that included wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy, theft of federal funds and conspiracy to steal federal funds, in addition to marketing campaign contributions by overseas nationals and conspiracy to make such contributions.
Federal authorities even have been growing proof to recommend that the Turkish Airways government, in coordination with Ms. Abbasova, helped prepare upgrades for Mr. Adams on Turkish Airways, an organization that Mr. Adams has extolled — even telling a pro-government Turkish publication in 2017 that the airline “is my approach of flying.”
Ms. Abbasova, who had served Mr. Adams as a volunteer within the borough president’s workplace earlier than she was employed full time in 2018, was suspended from her place because the director of protocol within the days after the search of her New Jersey dwelling, however earlier than that search had turn into public.
The mayor’s workforce advised The New York Put up that it had proactively put her on depart after discovering the improper actions cited by Mr. McGuire.
It was not publicly recognized on the time that on the identical morning the F.B.I. searched the house of Ms. Suggs, brokers additionally had descended on the New Jersey properties of Ms. Abbasova and Cenk Öcal, the previous Turkish Airways government who served on the mayor’s transition workforce. The New York Occasions reported on these searches two weeks later. Mr. Öcal has repeatedly declined to remark.
After the search of Ms. Suggs’s dwelling, brokers walked out with digital units and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams.”
That day, Mr. Adams had been planning to satisfy with federal officers in Washington in regards to the migrant disaster, which he had characterised as a difficulty of existential concern to New York Metropolis. However when he discovered of the raid, he canceled his public schedule and returned dwelling. His workplace mentioned on the time solely that he wished to “cope with a matter.”
When The Occasions reported on the raid of Ms. Abbasova’s dwelling, Mr. Adams’s spokesman urged she was a “junior staffer.” However she and Mr. Adams had a longstanding skilled relationship.
Ms. Abbasova was educated in drugs and dentistry in Azerbaijan and Turkey earlier than transferring to the USA, the place she continued her medical training and went into authorities service, in response to an utility she made to serve on a board of a constitution faculty.
“Rana Abbasova is a proud Azerbaijani American who builds relations with many ethnic, immigrant communities,” the appliance mentioned.
Throughout Mr. Adams’s first time period as borough president, Ms. Abbasova helped him make connections with Brooklyn’s small Turkish and Azerbaijani communities. She was given an workplace at Borough Corridor.
In 2015, she traveled to Turkey with Mr. Adams on a visit paid for by the Turkish consulate and the World Tourism Discussion board Institute, a company that claims it goals to broaden world tourism.
In 2018, Ms. Abbasova joined Mr. Adams’s paid workers as a “group coordinator,” incomes $50,000 a 12 months, in response to metropolis information. By 2021, her title had turn into “assistant to the compliance unit,” in response to a listing offered to Mr. Adams’s successor in Brooklyn, Antonio Reynoso.
In that position, “she was accountable for worldwide relations and sustaining relationships between the borough president and stakeholders, together with the Center East and Central Asian nations, Muslim and Russian-speaking communities, and nonprofit organizations,” in response to her Metropolis Corridor biography.
When Mr. Adams turned mayor in 2022, Ms. Abbasova moved to Metropolis Corridor, working as his “director of protocol for worldwide affairs,” a place during which she “advises and assists the mayor” and others “on diplomatic protocol and etiquette issues,” in response to the biography. She was incomes about $80,000 a 12 months when she was placed on depart.
The Turkish group in Brooklyn just isn’t a large one, in response to Social Explorer, a demographic knowledge agency. As of 2022, there have been 4,625 Turkish-born Brooklynites, making them the borough’s thirty eighth largest group of foreign-born New Yorkers.
The position that Ms. Abbasova stuffed in Brooklyn now not exists, a spokeswoman for Mr. Reynoso advised The Occasions final 12 months.
Ms. Abbasova labored in tandem with Mr. Öcal, the previous supervisor in New York for Turkish Airways, whereas within the borough president’s workplace, The Occasions has beforehand reported. Mr. Öcal had a relationship with Mr. Adams and was one among a whole bunch of individuals on his mayoral transition workforce.
She helped prepare a dinner Mr. Öcal attended whereas Mr. Adams was borough president with Turkish consular officers and board members of the Turken Basis, a U.S. nonprofit with shut ties to the federal government of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
She was additionally concerned in arranging Mr. Adams’s look at a 2019 gala held by Turkish Airways on the Metropolitan Membership in Manhattan, the place he made a quick speech.
Ms. Abbasova was additionally proposed as a board member in 2015 for the would-be constitution faculty, Mentora Worldwide, which utilized to function in New York and was backed by Enver Yücel, a Turkish entrepreneur and philanthropist who has met with Mr. Adams in Turkey and in Brooklyn. New York State denied Mentora’s utility, and the constitution faculty didn’t open.
Federal investigators sought information associated to marketing campaign contributions from individuals related to Bay Atlantic College, a nonprofit school and graduate faculty in Washington, D.C., based by Mr. Yücel, within the search warrant they obtained to go looking the house of Ms. Suggs.
Mr. Adams’s mayoral marketing campaign obtained a complete of $10,000 in contributions from 5 staff of Bay Atlantic College on Sept. 27, 2021, per week after the revealing of the brand new Turkish consulate constructing in Manhattan, and refunded the donations the next month. After Mr. Adams gained the mayoral election that November, Mr. Yücel posted an image of them collectively on Instagram.
“I’d cordially wish to congratulate my pricey buddy Eric Adams for his new position as the brand new mayor of New York Metropolis,” the caption mentioned.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Nicole Hong contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed analysis.
