The businessman, Sezgin Baran Korkmaz, is talked about in Adams’ indictment, recognized as “Businessman #3, a development reported by LA Magazine. Citing several sources familiar with the matter, the California magazine also reported Korkmaz is a reputed CIA asset and expected to testify against Adams at his trial, which is slated to start in April 2025.
According to his indictment, Adams met with “Businessman #3” in Istanbul in January 2019 to debate plans for the businessman to make an allegedly unlawful $50,000 contribution to his 2021 marketing campaign by way of straw donors.
“During the meeting, Businessman-3 agreed to contribute $50,000 or more to the 2021 Campaign, believing that ADAMS might one day be the President of the United States and hoping to gain influence with ADAMS,” the indictment says. The businessman in the end by no means made that contribution as his authorized troubles within the U.S. started to emerge, in response to courtroom papers.
Adams crossing paths with Korkmaz earlier this yr comes because the mayor is beneath a federal protecting order prohibiting him from talking with “witnesses and individuals mentioned in” his indictment “about the facts/circumstances listed in the indictment,” courtroom papers say.
Days after indicting Adams in September on fees that he solicited bribes and unlawful marketing campaign money from Turkish authorities operatives, prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. legal professional’s workplace offered his authorized group with an inventory figuring out the people he shouldn’t communicate with.
It’s unclear if Korkmaz — who’s at the moment going through unrelated federal fees in a cash laundering case in Utah — is on that checklist and a Metropolis Corridor spokeswoman didn’t instantly return a request for touch upon whether or not the mayor was conscious of Korkmaz’s participation within the occasion.
The video doesn’t present Adams and Korkmaz talking to one another.
It’s unclear who hosted the meals giveaway occasion, which the mayor attended with out itemizing it on his schedule of public appearances. The mayor did submit photographs on his official X account from the occasion and included a caption saying he was there to assist “making sure New Yorkers had a warm meal on a cold night.”
Adams has pleaded not responsible to the fees within the indctment, and his legal professional, Alex Spiro, didn’t return a request for remark Wednesday. The Manhattan U.S. legal professional’s workplace declined to remark.
A lawyer listed as representing Korkmaz within the Utah case didn’t instantly return a request for remark concerning the meals giveaway occasion he attended within the Decrease East Facet final month.
The main points concerning the Oct. 16 meals giveaway occasion are rising as Korkmaz is combating his personal felony case in Utah.
Korkmaz was indicted in that federal case in 2021 on fees alleging he helped launder tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in taxpayer-funded biofuel subsidies that his co-conspirators had stolen. Korkmaz has pleaded not responsible in that case, and his trial was initially supposed to begin final week. Nevertheless, simply final week, he acquired the trial pushed again to begin March 10, 2025 as a substitute.
