A City Hall aide who was suspended for improper conduct during an FBI investigation into New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign funding is collaborating with the investigators, according to sources.
The Adams staffer who allegedly turned on her former employer has been identified as Rana Abbasova, whose house was raided by law enforcement as part of the federal corruption probe into the mayor’s 2021 campaign and its alleged links to the Turkish government.
Sources claim that during the November 2023 raid on Abbasova’s New Jersey home, she pushed other City Hall employees to remove messages, which resulted in her termination. After the federal authorities were notified of her “improper” actions, City Hall put her on leave.
Subsequently, federal agents secured a court order to seize Adams’ cell phones in order to ascertain whether he had also received correspondence from Abbasova – discovering that Hizzoner had received nothing of the sort, according to the source.
The FBI is looking into whether Adams’ team pushed the FDNY to expedite permits for a new Turkish Consulate in Midtown Manhattan (Turkevi Center) that had previously failed a safety inspection, and whether they colluded with the Turkish government to finance Hizzoner’s campaign with foreign funds.
What details Ms. Abbasova, the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs’ director of protocol, gave the federal authorities remained unknown. However, e-mails reveal that she was either aware of or participated in some of Mr. Adams’s transactions with Turkish businesspeople and government officials. Records also indicate that she organized for part of his travel, going with him on two official visits to Turkiye, and assisted in organizing activities and meetings with members of the Turkish community in New York and overseas.
Ms. Abbasova, 41, an Azerbaijani native, had been employed by Mr. Adams in the Brooklyn borough president’s office for almost four years prior to his elevation to the mayor’s office. In the weeks following the F.B.I. search of her house on November 2, she started speaking with the group of investigators and federal prosecutors heading the corruption probe. Agents also searched the residences of a former Turkish Airlines executive and the mayor’s main fund-raiser on the same day.
Ms. Abbasova, like the mayor and other people being investigated, has not been formally charged with any crimes.
