New York City paying $500,000 a month to indicted developer who could testify against Mayor Eric Adams
The administration of New York City mayor Eric Adams is continuing to pay over $500,000 a month to a hotel developer who could potentially provide valuable testimony to prosecutors against the mayor and several of his top allies.
The developer, Weihong Hu, was indicted last month for allegedly bribing a New York City non-profit CEO. The indictment charges that she gave the nonprofit executive stacks of cash and helped him purchase a $1.3m townhouse in exchange for more than $20m in city-funded contracts for her two Queens hotels and a catering company. Hu has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Despite these allegations brought by the US attorney for the eastern district of New York, Adamsās administration has continued to pay one of Huās companies more than $542,000 a month to host another nonprofit program at one of her Queens hotels, according to two city officials with knowledge of the matter.
Hu was the subject of a previous joint investigation by the Guardian, the City and Documented, which found that she funnelled apparently illegal campaign contributions to Adams at that hotel, allowed one of his top advisers to live in her taxpayer-funded shelter hotel for months, and allowed Adamsās son to bring a female companion to the hotel and stay there overnight.
After doling out those favors, the media partners found, Hu received millions more in contract dollars from Adamsās administration. She also received favorable regulatory decisions, including the greenlighting of her construction projects cited for worker safety and affordable housing violations.
In response to that story, her attorney for civil matters, Kevin Tung, pushed back on the notion that his client had engaged in wrongdoing: āAll of these are allegations ā¦ and most of them, I donāt think theyāre true.ā
But following the outletsā investigation, federal investigators raided Huās hotel on the same day they raided the home of a friend of Adams, who reportedly intervened with city officials to help her clear a construction safety violation, suggesting that prosecutors were looking into Huās favors to Adams and his inner circle.
After her indictment, Hu began engaging in plea negotiations with prosecutors, a court filing shows. Good government experts said the developer could seek to trade information about her dealings with Adams, his son, and his top advisers in exchange for leniency from prosecutors ā a possibility that makes his administrationās ongoing payments to the indicted developer all the more troubling.
āPut in the bluntest way possible, it does seem extraordinary given the indictment, that the administration is essentially paying someone that is poised to be a witness against them,ā said Elizabeth Glazer, a former federal prosecutor and the former head of the mayoral agency currently paying Hu under Adams.
Ben Weinberg, Citizen Unionās director of public policy, said the mayorās office should find alternative hotel providers āas soon as possibleā.
āItās baffling that taxpayer dollars continue to fund a subcontractor after their indictment for bribery and theft of public funds,ā he said. āThe possibility that this subcontractor could implicate City Hall officials as part of a plea deal raises even more ethical concerns.ā
Contacted by the Guardian, Huās criminal attorney Benjamin Brafman, who has previously described his client as a āvictimā and not a co-conspirator, said that āthere are zero plea negotiations under wayā despite the document filed in court, signed by his co-counsel and approved by a judge, that specifically references āplea negotiationsā.
In response to questions from the Guardian, a spokesperson for the mayorās office of criminal justice, the agency in charge of the contract, said the Adams administration had begun working with the social service non-profit currently at Huās hotel to find an alternative site.
The agency provided no timeline for when that move might occur and cautioned that finding an alternative property would be difficult. Terminating Huās contract abruptly āwithout a suitable alternative would risk community safety, retraumatize individuals, and ultimately cost taxpayers moreā, the spokesperson said.
But in an email, Elizabeth Koke, a spokesperson for HousingWorks, the social services non-profit, suggested that thus far there had been no substantive coordination between her group and the city to find an alternative site for the program which houses formerly incarcerated individuals.
The ongoing payments, which could result in approximately $20m for Hu over the next three years, come as the Trump administration has been pushing to free Adams of federal corruption charges in a separate federal court, the southern district of New York, a politically motivated move that might undermine further cooperation opportunities for Hu.
Donald Trump officials have sought to dismiss the indictment against Adams, which concerned allegations of bribery involving Turkish government officials, but in a way that would not dismiss the charges permanently ā thus incentivizing the mayor to collaborate with Trumpās hardline immigration agenda.
The US attorneyās office for the eastern district of New York did not respond to questions about how the Department of Justiceās internal campaign on behalf of Adams could affect its investigation in this case, and whether its prohibitions on ātargeting Adamsā would extend to the members of his inner circle whom Hu also worked with.
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