Donor Expected to Admit to Making Illegal Contributions to Adams

Federal prosecutors said they planned to charge a businessman who has close ties to New York’s Turkish community with conspiracy to commit fraud.

One of the businessmen whom the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams described as having made illegal donations to Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign was expected to face a criminal charge and wishes to plead guilty, federal prosecutors said in a court filing on Monday.

The prosecutors have filed a notice of intent to charge the businessman, Erden Arkan, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud related to the illegal contributions, the filing said.

Nothing in the filing indicated that Mr. Arkan has been cooperating with the prosecutors in their case against Mr. Adams, who was charged with bribery, fraud and conspiring with Turkish officials to receive illegal foreign campaign donations. And there was some question of whether foreign money was involved in any of the actions Mr. Arkan is accused of taking, which may limit his ability to aid in the prosecution of Mr. Adams, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York unveiled the five-count indictment against Mr. Adams in late September, making him the first sitting mayor in the modern history of New York City to face criminal charges.

Mr. Arkan’s lawyer, Jonathan Rosen, with the Potomac Law Group based in Washington, D.C., declined to comment.

Although prosecutors have not indicated that Mr. Arkan is cooperating with the government, Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Mr. Adams, nonetheless said that he would be of little benefit in the case against Mr. Adams.

“We know from the government’s own interviews that Mr. Arkan repeatedly said that Mayor Adams had no knowledge of his actions,” Mr. Spiro said in a statement. “Mr. Arkan’s conduct will have no bearing on the mayor’s case whatsoever.”

Identified as “Businessman-5” in the indictment of the mayor, Mr. Arkan and others listened in April 2021 as Mr. Adams explained New York City’s generous matching-funds program — which rewards candidates who receive small-dollar donations by making them eligible to collect large sums of public money for their campaigns — and, a month later, held a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams, prosecutors said.

Mr. Arkan, who has close ties to New York’s Turkish community and owns a construction firm called KSK Construction, gave $1,250 apiece to 10 of his employees to donate to Mr. Adams’s campaign, prosecutors said.

While recruiting contributors, Mr. Arkan wrote to them, in part, that this “may feel like swimming against the current, but unfortunately this is how things work in this country,” prosecutors said in the indictment.

A day before the scheduled fund-raiser, a Turkish official sent Mr. Arkan at least one check, and he later sent a message saying that the “checks that reached us are 17,000.”

In total, the fund-raising event put on by Mr. Arkan raised more than $69,000 from 84 donors. The campaign then used those donations to seek an additional $63,760 in matching funds, the indictment said.

If prosecutors move forward, Mr. Arkan will be only the second person to be charged with aiding Mr. Adams in a campaign fund-raising scheme. In October, a former City Hall aide was charged with tampering with witnesses in the federal corruption investigation into Mr. Adams. The aide, Mohamed Bahi, has since begun talking with prosecutors about a potential guilty plea, suggesting he may help the government in their case against the mayor, court papers show.

It is not unusual for prosecutors to offer leniency to potential witnesses against the targets of investigations.

Last week, in a memo to the court, prosecutors said that they had a strong case against the mayor that included “multiple witnesses who will expressly implicate the defendant in criminal conduct.” They added that the witness accounts were backed up by “electronic communications and other data obtained from over 50 cellphones and other electronic devices and accounts.”

Mr. Adams has said that he plans to run for re-election in 2025 even as a dozen members of his inner circle — two successive police commissioners, his schools chancellor, deputy mayor for public safety and others — have been ensnared in federal corruption investigations this year.

Last week, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Mr. Adams’s former chief adviser and longtime friend, was charged in state court in a bribery scheme involving $100,000 for a new Porsche for her son.

Bianca Pallaro and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.