City Leasing the Focus of Latest Investigation Into Mayor Eric Adams
Cushman & Wakefield broker Diana Boutross reportedly had her phone seized by investigators
By Isabelle Durso October 10, 2024 12:48 pm
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams has had a few very bad weeks as allegations of bribery and other wrongdoings pile up around his administration. Now, he’s been slapped with yet another allegation.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has opened a new corruption investigation into the city’s leasing of commercial properties, focusing on potential bribery and money laundering, The New York Times reported.
Spokespeople for the DA and the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Sept. 27, investigators seized the phones of at least five people at John F. Kennedy International Airport as part of the inquiry. The group of people returning from vacation consisted of several state and city officials, including Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’s chief adviser; Jesse Hamilton, a top real estate official in New York City; and Diana Boutross, a broker from Cushman & Wakefield (CWK) involved in city leases, the Times reported.
Boutross, who has 20 years of experience and currently serves as vice chairman at C&W, has worked on several recent leases in the city, including a 25,000-square-foot lease for musical entertainment attraction Broadway 4D at 234 West 42nd Street, as Commercial Observer previously reported.
While she has focused mainly on retail leasing during her career, the Times reported that she took over a C&W account with the city’s real estate department — the Department of Citywide Administrative Services — last year and has helped find the city office and industrial space as part of the job.
“We have a long-standing, 15-year relationship with the city that spans across multiple mayoral administrations and we are proud of the important work we’ve done for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services,” a spokesperson for C&W said in a statement to CO.
Meanwhile, a City Hall spokesperson told the Times that the city holds “all employees to the highest ethical standards and have been abundantly clear that they must follow the law.”
Further details about the new investigation were unclear, but the Times reported that investigators were likely seeking financial records and communications with city agencies related to bribery and other crimes on the seized phones.
“I do believe that in the end that the New York City public will see that we have not done anything illegal to the magnitude of scale that requires the federal government and the DA’s office to investigate us,” Lewis-Martin, who has been served with a grand jury subpoena related to the investigation, said on a radio show Sept. 27, as reported by the Times.
The DA’s investigation comes nearly a month after Adams was indicted by federal prosecutors on five counts of bribery and soliciting illegal campaign contributions. Despite the charges leading to an exodus in the Adams administration — most recently his longtime ally Sheena Wright leaving her post as first deputy mayor — Adams has repeatedly said he plans to stay in office and run for re-election next year.
Even if Adams — who has been embraced by the real estate industry from the start — insists who won’t leave office, that hasn’t stopped a growing field of candidates lining up to replace him, including former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has emerged as a likely favorite of the real estate industry.
Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.
