Antonio Reynoso, who succeeded New York City Mayor Eric Adams as borough president of Brooklyn, has said like Adams, he was also offered lavish gifts by Turkish officials but returned them due to legal and ethical concerns, according to US media.
Reynoso’s remarks were first made during an interview on New York station PIX11 and later to other US media outlets on Monday, following the filing of federal charges against Adams in an indictment last week in which he is accused of bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy and soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals.
SEE it : @ReynosoBrooklyn tells @PIX11News what he encountered when it came to offers from the Turkish government after he was sworn in.
“They knew very well what they can and can’t do,” Reynoso says about gifts and offers made. https://t.co/RrxidWqCHx pic.twitter.com/ck7ipjNI4U
— Dan Mannarino (@DanMannarino) September 30, 2024
According to the indictment, Adams received illegal donations and more than $100,000 worth of free plane tickets and luxury hotel stays from wealthy Turkish nationals and at least one government official in a nearly decade-long corruption scheme. In return, prosecutors said, the mayor granted political favors to Turkish officials.
Reynoso said Turkish government officials also offered to fly him to İstanbul for free a few months after he took office in 2022 but that he turned down the airplane ticket and returned another lavish gift — eight porcelain, gold-plated tea sets that arrived as a gift from the Turkish Consulate General, out of legal and ethical concerns.
“As much as we are grateful for these gifts, I have been advised by my counsel that I must return them to you,” Reynoso wrote in a letter in March 2022 to Reyhan Özgür, the former Turkish consul general in New York.
In an interview with The News, Reynoso said representatives from the Turkish consulate came to his Borough Hall office in March 2022 to talk about issues related to Brooklyn’s Turkish diaspora.
“They met with me and just talked about wanting to take me to İstanbul, saying, ‘You should come out,’ and I said if I’m on vacation and decide Turkey is where I want to go, I can check in with you when I’m there,” he said. “They said, ‘No, no, we can take care of it.’”
Reynoso, a former City Council member, said he rejected the offer because he had long been taught public officials like himself were prohibited from accepting gifts worth more than $50 from foreign government officials. “I knew these gifts were a lot more expensive than that,” he said.
But the Turkish officials tried again the next day, when Reynoso said someone from the consulate came back to his office wanting to gift him eight porcelain, gold-plated tea sets. Reynoso said his general counsel at Borough Hall promptly returned the tea set to the consulate.
“The decision I made was an individual one that speaks to my leadership in Borough Hall,” Reynoso said.
Özgür, who sent the gifts to Reynoso, served as Turkey’s consul general in New York between August 2020 and August 2024.
He is supposed to be the unnamed Turkish diplomat in the Adams indictment, who is referred to more than 100 times as the “Turkish official” and accused of helping arrange free and subsidized travel on Turkish Airlines for Adams and his associates and of facilitating illegal straw donations from foreign nationals for Adams’s election campaign.
He is also accused of asking Adams to pressure the New York City Fire Department to allow the new Turkish high-rise consulate in Midtown Manhattan to open in advance of the arrival of the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in 2021, according to the indictment.
Meanwhile, at a press conference on Monday Alex Spiro, Adams’ lead attorney in the criminal case, was asked about Reynoso’s gift rejections.
“I’m glad he didn’t take the porcelain set. If he had, it would not have been a federal crime,” Spiro told reporters.