New York City paying $500,000 a month to indicted developer who could testify against Mayor Eric Adams

The administration of New York City mayor Eric Adams is continuing to pay over $500,000 a month to a hotel developer who could potentially provide valuable testimony to prosecutors against the mayor and several of his top allies.

The developer, Weihong Hu, was indicted last month for allegedly bribing a New York City non-profit CEO. The indictment charges that she gave the nonprofit executive stacks of cash and helped him purchase a $1.3m townhouse in exchange for more than $20m in city-funded contracts for her two Queens hotels and a catering company. Hu has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Despite these allegations brought by the US attorney for the eastern district of New York, Adams’s administration has continued to pay one of Hu’s companies more than $542,000 a month to host another nonprofit program at one of her Queens hotels, according to two city officials with knowledge of the matter.

Hu was the subject of a previous joint investigation by the Guardian, the City and Documented, which found that she funnelled apparently illegal campaign contributions to Adams at that hotel, allowed one of his top advisers to live in her taxpayer-funded shelter hotel for months, and allowed Adams’s son to bring a female companion to the hotel and stay there overnight.

After doling out those favors, the media partners found, Hu received millions more in contract dollars from Adams’s administration. She also received favorable regulatory decisions, including the greenlighting of her construction projects cited for worker safety and affordable housing violations.

In response to that story, her attorney for civil matters, Kevin Tung, pushed back on the notion that his client had engaged in wrongdoing: “All of these are allegations … and most of them, I don’t think they’re true.”

Fresh Meadows hotel. Photograph: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

But following the outlets’ investigation, federal investigators raided Hu’s hotel on the same day they raided the home of a friend of Adams, who reportedly intervened with city officials to help her clear a construction safety violation, suggesting that prosecutors were looking into Hu’s favors to Adams and his inner circle.

After her indictment, Hu began engaging in plea negotiations with prosecutors, a court filing shows. Good government experts said the developer could seek to trade information about her dealings with Adams, his son, and his top advisers in exchange for leniency from prosecutors – a possibility that makes his administration’s ongoing payments to the indicted developer all the more troubling.

“Put in the bluntest way possible, it does seem extraordinary given the indictment, that the administration is essentially paying someone that is poised to be a witness against them,” said Elizabeth Glazer, a former federal prosecutor and the former head of the mayoral agency currently paying Hu under Adams.

Ben Weinberg, Citizen Union’s director of public policy, said the mayor’s office should find alternative hotel providers “as soon as possible”.

“It’s baffling that taxpayer dollars continue to fund a subcontractor after their indictment for bribery and theft of public funds,” he said. “The possibility that this subcontractor could implicate City Hall officials as part of a plea deal raises even more ethical concerns.”

Weihong Hu leaves Brooklyn federal court on 12 March 2025. Photograph: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Contacted by the Guardian, Hu’s criminal attorney Benjamin Brafman, who has previously described his client as a “victim” and not a co-conspirator, said that “there are zero plea negotiations under way” despite the document filed in court, signed by his co-counsel and approved by a judge, that specifically references “plea negotiations”.

In response to questions from the Guardian, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office of criminal justice, the agency in charge of the contract, said the Adams administration had begun working with the social service non-profit currently at Hu’s hotel to find an alternative site.

The agency provided no timeline for when that move might occur and cautioned that finding an alternative property would be difficult. Terminating Hu’s contract abruptly “without a suitable alternative would risk community safety, retraumatize individuals, and ultimately cost taxpayers more”, the spokesperson said.

But in an email, Elizabeth Koke, a spokesperson for HousingWorks, the social services non-profit, suggested that thus far there had been no substantive coordination between her group and the city to find an alternative site for the program which houses formerly incarcerated individuals.

The ongoing payments, which could result in approximately $20m for Hu over the next three years, come as the Trump administration has been pushing to free Adams of federal corruption charges in a separate federal court, the southern district of New York, a politically motivated move that might undermine further cooperation opportunities for Hu.

Donald Trump officials have sought to dismiss the indictment against Adams, which concerned allegations of bribery involving Turkish government officials, but in a way that would not dismiss the charges permanently – thus incentivizing the mayor to collaborate with Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.

The US attorney’s office for the eastern district of New York did not respond to questions about how the Department of Justice’s internal campaign on behalf of Adams could affect its investigation in this case, and whether its prohibitions on “targeting Adams” would extend to the members of his inner circle whom Hu also worked with.