City Hall Official Charged With Witness Tampering in Adams Inquiry

Mohamed Bahi, who resigned Monday from the mayor’s office of community affairs, was accused of instructing witnesses to lie to federal authorities.

Mayor Eric Adams’s former chief liaison to the Muslim community was arrested Tuesday on federal witness tampering and destruction of evidence charges that had grown out of the investigation that led to the mayor’s indictment last month.

The liaison, Mohamed Bahi, was charged by the F.B.I. in a criminal complaint in connection with the investigation of illegal contributions made to Mr. Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign, officials said.

The complaint against Mr. Bahi has significant implications for Mr. Adams. According to prosecutors, a businessman who made straw donations to the mayor on behalf of four of his employees has been cooperating with the investigation. Mr. Adams’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, had previously suggested that the indictment against the mayor was based primarily on the cooperation of one witness, another former aide. But the charges Tuesday indicate otherwise.

Initially, the businessman lied to federal investigators, the complaint said, and was urged by Mr. Bahi — who claimed he had spoken to Mr. Adams — to continue doing so.

During a subsequent meeting with the same businessman, Mr. Bahi indicated that he had met with Mr. Adams, and that Mr. Adams believed the businessman was not cooperating with the authorities.

Mr. Bahi also encouraged four other witnesses — the four straw donors — to lie to investigators, the complaint said.

The charges were announced on Tuesday by the leaders of the agencies that brought the indictment against the mayor — Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York; James E. Dennehy, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s New York field office; and Jocelyn E. Strauber, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation.

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Asked on Tuesday morning about the accusations against Mr. Bahi, Mr. Adams said Mr. Bahi had worked as his liaison to Muslim New Yorkers even before Mr. Bahi joined City Hall. The mayor said that Mr. Bahi was a “thoughtful” adviser who had “delivered for New Yorkers.” City records show that Mr. Adams hired Mr. Bahi in 2022 at a salary of $80,000.

Mr. Adams added that he would never instruct anyone to do anything illegal or improper, saying he always tells people to “follow the law.”

A spokesman for Mr. Adams’s lawyer, Mr. Spiro, said he could not comment.

Later on Tuesday, Mr. Bahi, who resigned from his City Hall position a day earlier, appeared in federal court in Lower Manhattan before Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger.

The judge set bond at $250,000 and gave Mr. Bahi a week to post it with two co-signers. After the proceeding, Kevin R. Puvalowski, a lawyer for Mr. Bahi, said his client had no comment.

Mr. Bahi, 40, has at times appeared with Mr. Adams at City Hall events. Last year, he introduced the mayor ahead of a City Hall announcement about rules surrounding the Islamic call to prayer.

The complaint against Mr. Bahi also described Mr. Adams’s reliance on an encrypted messaging app called Signal to communicate, and it said that he encouraged others to follow his lead. Mr. Bahi himself used the app to communicate with the mayor, and he deleted it from his phone in the hours before the federal agents seized it from him, according to the complaint, which was sworn out by F.B.I. Special Agent Jacob Balog.

Mr. Adams campaigned for office on a platform of fighting crime. Yet nearly three years into his tenure, prosecutors were conducting at least four federal corruption investigations involving him and his top aides — and the mayor himself was indicted on five counts of criminal corruption.

The dissonance between his political messaging and the criminal investigations into his administration was underscored by the timing of the prosecutors’ announcement on Tuesday. Perhaps by coincidence, they issued the news release at the same time that Mr. Adams was appearing at Police Headquarters to announce a decline in crime.

On the day the charges were announced against Mr. Bahi, the Adams administration was already reeling from the federal scrutiny and its fallout. The corruption inquiries, phone seizures and searches of aides’ homes have led to the resignations of some of the highest-ranking officials in City Hall, including the police commissioner, schools chancellor, deputy mayor for public safety and, on Tuesday, Mr. Adams’s first deputy mayor.

Three of the four investigations, including the one that led to the indictment of the mayor, have been overseen by prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan. The fourth is being run by prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. The Department of Investigation has played a role in all four.

The two-count complaint announced against Mr. Bahi on Tuesday accused him of helping to arrange straw donations from the businessman who is now cooperating to the campaign of Mr. Adams, who is described in the charging document as “Official-1.”

Based on campaign finance records, the description of the cooperating donor matches that of Tolib Mansurov, an Uzbek businessman who runs a construction company called United Elite Group. Mr. Mansurov did not respond to requests for comment. A person who answered the phone at his company on Tuesday said he was not in the office.

Mr. Mansurov is referred to in the indictment of the mayor as “Businessman-4.” According to that indictment, Mr. Adams solicited and received straw donations from Mr. Mansurov, who was told by representatives of Mr. Adams that those donations would increase his influence and the standing of his community with Mr. Adams.

Those representatives, volunteers for the campaign who were identified in the indictment as “Adams Employee-1” and “Adams Employee-2” and who were later hired by the mayor’s administration, served as the campaign’s liaisons to the Uzbek community in New York City.

In December 2020, according to the indictment, the volunteers, one of whom matches the description of Mr. Bahi, asked Mr. Mansurov to contribute $10,000, suggesting that he was getting a bargain because the influence that money would buy would become more expensive at a later date.

The complaint against Mr. Bahi described text messages that Mr. Mansurov exchanged with someone using a phone number he had saved as “Muhammad Bahi.” The texts referred to a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams scheduled at Mr. Mansurov’s office in Brooklyn on Dec. 10, 2020, at 7 p.m.

The day before, the contact texted Mr. Mansurov and, apparently referring to Mr. Adams, said that “he moved it tomorrow to 5 p.m. Is that ok?” the complaint said. It added that Mr. Mansurov replied, “yes even better.” Texts from the day of the fund-raiser indicated that Mr. Adams had arrived and gone inside.

According to the complaint against Mr. Bahi, the businessman and the four employees donated $2,000 each to Mr. Adams’s campaign on the date of the December 2020 fund-raiser. Records filed by Mr. Adams with the city’s Campaign Finance Board showed contributions in that amount by Mr. Mansurov and four of his employees made by check and dated one week later.

The accuracy of the campaign record depends on the submissions made by the candidate to the board. Any discrepancies between the date the donations were made and when they were recorded would stem from the information provided by the campaign’s team. Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign did not disclose the fund-raiser to the Campaign Finance Board.

After arranging the contributions, Mr. Mansurov sought favors from Mr. Adams and received them, the indictment of the mayor says, including with problems the businessman was having with the Department of Buildings. Later, prosecutors say, Mr. Mansurov thanked Mr. Adams, who had promised to look into his issues, after they were partially resolved.

Mr. Mansurov also sought help arranging events celebrating his national heritage, according to the indictment.

In 2023, Mr. Adams held a flag-raising ceremony for Uzbekistan in Lower Manhattan and presented Mr. Mansurov with a mayoral proclamation celebrating his heritage.

On June 13, 2023, Mr. Mansurov donated an additional $1,000 to Mr. Adams’s re-election campaign, public records show. In June of this year, one of Mr. Mansurov’s employees who also donated to Mr. Adams in December 2020 gave another $250 to his 2025 mayoral campaign, records show.

Two days later, on June 13, according to the complaint against Mr. Bahi, Mr. Mansurov and the four employees were interviewed by the F.B.I. and denied any involvement with straw donations.

On the same day, Mr. Bahi went to Mr. Mansurov’s office, where he urged Mr. Mansurov and the employees who donated to Mr. Adams to continue lying to investigators, according to the complaint. Mr. Bahi also took pictures of the grand jury subpoenas the employees had been given, the complaint said.

When F.B.I. agents came to search Mr. Bahi’s home the following month, he pretended not to be there, but eventually came to the door, the complaint said.

Mr. Mansurov and his employees were later interviewed by investigators again while represented by lawyers in the hopes of receiving leniency in the inquiry, prosecutors said. He ultimately “admitted his involvement in straw donations” to Mr. Adams’s campaign and in an unrelated fraud case, the complaint said.

In January of this year, Mr. Mansurov and two United Elite employees also contributed a total of $5,000 to Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate and the elected official who would replace Mr. Adams if he resigned.

Alain Delaquérière contributed research.