A hotel developer and fundraiser for New York City mayor Eric Adams (D.) bought her way into the mayor’s inner circle and scored lucrative favors from the Adams administration, according to a Guardian report on Thursday.
Weihong Hu received contract favors that boosted her businesses and earned her millions of dollars after she allegedly made illegal donations to Adams’s reelection campaign in 2021 and provided benefits to several longtime associates of the Democratic mayor, the Guardian reported.
Government records show the Adams administration awarded Hu an additional $6.2 million annually by renewing her shelter contract in Queens four times, while a second contract approved by the administration granted $6.3 million per year to another of Hu’s hotels in New York City.
The administration also allegedly helped drop the safety citations against Hu’s construction projects on two separate occasions, and in late 2022 freed Hu of a stop-work order on one of her hotels, the outlet noted.
Hu had allowed Winnie Greco, one of Adams’s top aides, to stay at one of her hotels for about eight months in a taxpayer-funded suite intended for housing formerly incarcerated New Yorkers. Greco’s stay likely cost the city at least $50,000, according to the outlet’s review of the hotel invoices.
The mayor’s son, Jordan Coleman, also visited the hotel with a young woman at least once and used one of the taxpayer-funded rooms, although it is not clear whether Coleman or the woman stayed the night.
In addition, Hu worked with and reportedly paid John Sampson, a friend of the mayor who had been sentenced to prison in 2017 for obstructing a federal investigation into his alleged embezzlement of more than $400,000, as well as Alfred Cockfield II, an Adams ally accused of secretly pocketing funds from a political action committee he was running.
Adams and Hu first met in May 2021 at the mayor’s fundraising event in Brooklyn, according to two people who were at the meeting. Hu repeatedly called Adams "a good man" during the half-hour meeting.
Hu’s attorney, Kevin Tung, told the Guardian in a phone call that "all of these [claims against Hu] are allegations," adding that "most of them, I don’t think they’re true."
A Chinese government source said Hu in 2007 "confessed" to paying "millions in bribes" to a Chinese Communist Party official and was detained before she could board a plane to the United States, according to the Guardian.
The revelations about Hu's close ties with the Adams administration come as Adams faces an FBI investigation into whether his campaign conspired with the Turkish government to rake in foreign money.