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 has previously suggested that the indictment against the mayor was based primarily on the cooperation of one witness, another former aide. But the charges today indicate otherwise.

Initially, the businessman lied to federal investigators, the complaint says, 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.

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Mr. Bahi, who on Monday resigned from his City Hall position, was expected to appear before Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger in federal court in Manhattan later in the day.

A lawyer for Mr. Bahi could not immediately be reached for comment.

The complaint highlights Mr. Adams’s reliance on an encrypted messaging app called Signal to communicate and says that he encouraged others to follow his lead. Mr. Bahi himself used the app to communicate with the mayor. Mr. Bahi deleted it no more than six hours before federal agents seized his phone, 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. Nearly three years into his tenure, prosecutors indicted him on five counts of criminal corruption, and at least three other federal investigations are swirling around his inner circle. That dissonance was underscored by the timing of the prosecutors’ announcement. They issued the news release at the same time that Mr. Adams was appearing at Police Headquarters to announce a decline in crime.

The two-count complaint accuses Mr. Bahi 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 Tolib Mansurov, an Uzbek businessman who runs a construction company called United Elite Group.

According to the complaint against Mr. Bahi, the businessman and four employees donated $2,000 each to Mr. Adams’s campaign on Dec. 10, 2020. Records Mr. Adams filed with the city’s Campaign Finance Board showed contributions in that amount by Mr. Mansurov and four of his employees made via 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. Mansurov is referred to in the mayor’s indictment 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.

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.

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 on Dec. 10, 2021, 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 following day indicated that Mr. Adams had arrived at the fund-raiser and gone inside.

According to the complaint, Mr. Mansurov and the employees were interviewed by the F.B.I. on June 13 of this year and denied any involvement with straw donations. But they were later interviewed again while represented by lawyers in the hopes of receiving leniency.

Mr. Mansurov ultimately “admitted his involvement in straw donations” to Mr. Adams’s campaign and in an unrelated fraud case, the complaint said.