Brooklyn real estate magnate Erden Arkan pleaded guilty on Friday in federal court to funneling thousands of dollars to Mayor Adams’ 2021 campaign in coordination with a Turkish government official, setting him up to testify against the mayor.
Speaking with a hoarse voice from the lower Manhattan courtroom, Arkan, 76, admitted to orchestrating straw donations to Adams’ mayoral campaign through workers of the construction company he partly owns, KSK, and then reimbursing them. Arkan indicated he planned to enter the plea last month — the first resulting from the ongoing probe of illicit foreign donations to the mayor’s campaign.
“When I wrote the checks, I knew the Eric Adams campaign would use the checks to apply for public matching funds,” Arkan said, referring to the system under which city political candidates get donations from local residents matched eightfold with city dollars.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Celia Cohen told the court that if Arkan had gone to trial, prosecutors would have provided testimony, photographs, video electronic records, and other evidence to establish he illegally colluded with a Turkish consular official to funnel money to the mayoral campaign that Adams personally solicited at a restaurant in April 2021. Manhattan Federal Court Judge Dale Ho accepted Arkan’s plea and set his sentencing for Aug. 15.
While it wasn’t explicitly stated that the plea deal requires Arkan to testify against the mayor, his cooperation in the feds’ ongoing corruption investigation is all but certain, with Cohen asking his sentencing to be scheduled after Adams’ April trial. It is common for federal defendants who take plea deals to agree to testify or cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for leniency at sentencing.
The plea comes as prosecutors with the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office recently said in a filing they’d uncovered “additional criminal conduct” the mayor and others engaged in and may bring more charges.
Adams is accused of soliciting and accepting illegal straw donations from Arkan and others, as well as luxury travel upgrades and perks in exchange for doling out political favors for the Turkish government. He is expected to head to trial on the five counts of bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud in April — just two months before he’s up for reelection in the June primary.
He has pleaded not guilty.
Arkan appears in Adams’ indictment as “Businessman #5.” Per the indictment, he hosted a fundraiser for the soon-to-be mayor at his firm’s Brooklyn office in May 2021, a month after the dinner with the mayor mentioned in court Friday. On the day of the fundraiser, records show that Arkan and 10 employees of the firm donated nearly $14,000 cumulatively to Adams’ campaign, for which Arkan reimbursed them.
Records show that after submitting those contributions for public matching funds, the Adams campaign raked in an additional $22,000 in taxpayers’ cash off of them.
All of those donations were illegal straw contributions funded by Arkan and made “at the behest of” Reyhan Ozgur, Turkey’s consul general in New York, according to Adams’ indictment. Ozgur and Arkan allegedly agreed to make the illegal donations during the dinner with Adams in April 2021.
“We are supporting you,” Ozgur told Adams at that dinner, according to court papers.
As part of his plea, Arkan agreed to making $18,000 restitution payments and not to contest a sentence below six months. He also faces the risk of being denaturalized, deported, and denied entry to the U.S. in the future, Ho warned him.
The offense Arkan pleaded to could result in a maximum of up to five years in federal prison, three years supervised release and $250,000 in fines.
Arkan’s attorney, Jonathan Rosen, had no comment after Friday’s plea hearing.
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