(Bloomberg) -- The crisis enveloping New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ administration deepened as an aide was charged with witness tampering and destroying evidence and a former Fire Department official pleaded guilty to a bribery conspiracy charge.
Mohamed Bahi was charged with urging an unidentified construction company head and four employees to lie to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a probe of alleged straw donor contributions to Adams’ 2021 campaign. Straw donors serve as conduits for money to evade campaign funding restrictions.
Bahi, 40, resigned from his job as a senior community liaison on Monday. Arrested and charged Tuesday, he is accused of deleting the message encryption app Signal from his phone when federal agents searched his home in July, among other allegations. He was released following an appearance in court in Manhattan on Tuesday pending the posting of a $250,000 bond. His lawyer, Kevin R. Puvalowski, declined to comment.
Also on Tuesday, Brian Cordasco, a former Bureau of Fire Prevention chief, admitted to taking thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for preferential treatment on building inspections and approvals. Cordasco pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to solicit and receive bribes by an agent of an organization receiving federal funds.
Widening Circle
The widening circle of current and former city officials facing criminal charges threatens to bring down the administration a year before Adams is up for re-election. The mayor himself, who is identified in the Bahi case as Official-1, has been indicted on corruption charges amid a widespread criminal probe in which top City Hall aides have had their homes searched and phones seized by investigators.
Adams, who is free without bail, has pleaded not guilty, said he has done nothing wrong and rebuffed calls for his resignation. In a press conference after the charges against Bahi were announced, the 64-year-old mayor praised the aide’s service, calling him one of the city’s top liaisons with the Muslim community even before joining Adams’ office.
“I always found him to be willing to go into all the communities,” the mayor said. “I know he delivered for New Yorkers, and I thank him for that.”
Straw Donors
First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright resigned Monday, making her the seventh senior official and the latest member of the embattled mayor’s inner circle to step down or announce plans to leave within the past month.
Prosecutors on the Bahi case claim the five witnesses each contributed $2,000 to Adams’ campaign at a fundraiser at the Brooklyn headquarters of the construction company in December 2020. Adams was present at the fundraiser. The donations were all allegedly funded, in cash, by the company.
Then, this June, FBI agents executed a search warrant at the home of the construction company head and served him with a grand jury subpoena, as part of an investigation into straw donor contributions to the Adams campaign. The businessman then allegedly called Bahi to tell him about the agents’ actions.
Later that day, the US says, Bahi went to the offices of the construction company, telling the businessman he had just spoken to Adams. The businessman told him he had denied having funded the straw donations, according to prosecutors, who allege Bahi encouraged him and the other four witnesses to continue denying having made straw donations.
FBI Raid
In July FBI agents arrived at Bahi’s home with a search warrant at around 6 a.m., the government says. Investigators later discovered that sometime between midnight and the time agents entered the house that morning, Bahi had deleted the Signal app, the US says.
Cordasco, the former Bureau of Fire Prevention chief, and another onetime head of the bureau, Anthony Saccavino, were charged last month with allegedly sharing more than $190,000 in bribes from a retired firefighter, who ran an “expediting business,” in exchange for giving his clients’ projects priority.
Under the law, Cordasco, 50, faces as many as five years in prison at his sentencing on Feb. 19 and doesn’t have a cooperation agreement with prosecutors. Bahi, if convicted, faces as many as 20 years on each of two counts. Adams potentially faces decades behind bars if convicted of wire fraud, accepting a bribe and other charges. Under federal guidelines, such sentences can end up being considerably shorter.
The retired firefighter has pleaded guilty. Saccavino has pleaded not guilty.
The cases are US v. Bahi, 24-mg-03535 and US v. Saccavino, 24-cr-00537, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
--With assistance from Laura Nahmias and Fola Akinnibi.
(Updates with court appearance and lawyer’s response in third paragraph)
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