Who Paid for Adams Real Estate Chief Jesse Hamilton’s Japan Trip, Council Member Asks Following Report by THE CITY

The chair of the City Council’s government operations committee Friday demanded answers to conflict-of-interest questions raised by a vacation in Japan that included both the mayoral appointee who oversees the city’s leasing and a top executive at the brokerage that gets paid a commission by the property owners on those leases.

The trip last month included Deputy Commissioner for Real Estate Services Jesse Hamilton, a longtime ally of Mayor Eric Adams, and Diana Boutross, a vice president at Cushman & Wakefield who oversees the firm’s work with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) where Hamilton works.

Hamilton’s phone was seized as he landed in JFK by the Manhattan District Attorney on Sept. 27 in an ongoing investigation of lease deals. Adams’ chief advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin , who was also on the trip to Japan, had her phone seized at the same time.

Cushman & Wakefield has declined to say whether Boutross’ phone was seized as well.

Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) wrote to DCAS Commissioner Louis Molina on Friday, asking who paid for Hamilton’s travel to Japan and whether Hamilton had received a waiver from the city Conflicts of Interest Board in light of Hamilton’s “professional connection” to Cushman.

Restler asked Molina to clarify if Hamilton “engages with Cushman Wakefield on leasing matters” and, if so, whether that changed after Hamilton’s phone was confiscated by law enforcement.

On Friday THE CITY reported on several multi-million dollar DCAS lease deals handled by Cushman where the property owners had specifically lobbied Hamilton during lease negotiations. That included DCAS leasing 641,000 square feet of space in a mostly empty building at 110 William Street whose owners were financially struggling.

“Considering that DCAS has many hundreds of lease and license agreements that total approximately 22 million square feet, the potential corruption being investigated requires immediate oversight and accountability,” Restler wrote.

Restler did not mention another potential conflict documented by THE CITY: Hamilton, Lewis-Martin and Boutross were also accompanied by former city politician Adam Clayton Powell IV, a registered lobbyist who’d just a few months earlier had lobbied Hamilton on behalf of a Bronx contractor.

Powell told THE CITY the trip was just a vacation and “everyone paid their way.

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