This article was co-published with THE CITY
The invitations to then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams came roughly six days apart — one to a Taiwan National Day event and the other celebrating the 67th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
The instruction Adams delivered to his staff in September 2016 was the same concerning both: “Ask winnie should i attend.”
Winnie Greco, at the time Adams’ volunteer liaison to the Chinese American community, responded affirmatively to the People’s Republic anniversary at the Chinese Consulate General’s office in Manhattan.
But Greco advised turning down the invite from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, writing to Adams’ scheduler that, “This counts as the Independence Day for Taiwanese. It’s best for him to not go due to the conflict between China and Taiwan.”
Greco added: “He must be very careful with Taiwanese events.”
As Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams primarily had two staffers who were hyper-focused on a specific country or region: Greco, who was an unpaid volunteer with enormous power and influence, and Rana Abbasova, who started a long tenure with Adams as an unpaid volunteer and who last week emerged as perhaps the lead witness in the five-count indictment of Adams being prosecuted by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
Adams was charged with alleged bribery, wire fraud and soliciting campaign donations from foreign nations, much of it seemingly mediated by Abbasova — who was not identified by name in the indictment — in connecting Adams to Turkish Americans and Turkish government officials. He has pleaded not guilty and his attorney, Alex Spiro, has described the government’s main witness against Adams as a liar.
Abbasova, who Adams brought on as a paid borough hall staffer in 2018, helped organize his frequent travel to and through Turkey, which often came with perks that included free upgrades to business class seats on Turkish Airlines worth tens of thousands of dollars, according to the indictment.
Abbasova also helped facilitate connections to contributors who prosecutors said made illegal “straw” donations to Adams’ political campaigns in a bid to obscure their foreign origin, including for his 2025 reelection effort.
In their career arcs and roles in the mayor’s rise, Abbasova and Greco have at times mirrored each other as Adams rainmakers for campaign cash infused with alleged straw donations, points of access to far-flung governments that have tried to exert their influence in America and consultants on culturally sensitive judgment calls.
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Akin to Greco’s cautioning against Adams’ attendance at Taiwanese events, Abbasova assured a Turkish government official that Adams as mayor wouldn’t issue a statement acknowledging the Armenian Genocide Day on its day of remembrance in 2022, according to the indictment.
“Adams did not make such a statement,” the indictment said.
Adams rewarded Greco and Abbasova with paid executive positions in his administration when he became mayor in 2022: Greco was named director of Asian affairs and Abbasova was named director of protocol at the Mayor’s Office of International Affairs.
Greco awaits her own legal fate following a raid of her two homes by the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office and another on a Flushing Mall where THE CITY found evidence of straw donations at Adams campaign events she was involved with.
The parallels are among the currents that emerge from a trove of 2,500 pages of emails centered on Greco’s work during Adams’ time as borough president, which have been newly obtained by THE CITY and shared with Documented.
The emails cover much of the same time as events in the indictment, in which Greco, unnamed but easily identifiable, played a cameo role, traveling with Adams, and in one case his son Jordan, on two globetrotting journeys made within a few months of each other in 2017. On the itineraries of one trip or the other– or both– were the south of France, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Istanbul and Beijing.
The indictment charges that Adams and his fellow travelers reaped more than $50,000 in flight upgrades on those two trips alone.
At the time, Greco wasn’t a government official, so she wouldn’t have been subject to the City’s Conflicts of Interest Board rules prohibiting gifts valued above $50. A Greco attorney has previously told THE CITY that she paid her own way on those trips, but he did not furnish back-up documentation when asked.
Greco, who after becoming a government employee reported no income from any source on her 2021 financial disclosure, recently revised her 2023 disclosure to include three perks or benefits she received.
The emails underscore the central role Greco played in Adams’ relationship to the Chinese government and local Chinese leaders who were typically friendly to the government.
It details her multiple trips to China, often with Adams; a yet-unrealized and costly project to get a Beijing-supported cultural archway built in Brooklyn’s Chinatown, and her role as a gatekeeper who cleared access to him for various Chinese and Chinese American groups, business leaders and potential donors.
Many of the emails display Greco’s efforts to enlist Adams’ public involvement with Chinese officials or groups closely identified with the government at a time when relations between China and the U.S. were growing more strained.
They involved his appearance at events of her choosing and his issuing proclamations and citations lauding the work of organizations and individuals supportive of the Chinese government.
The emails also show how Greco influenced Adams’ relationship with the Chinese American community, from which he reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations toward his mayoral campaign, including at a number of the events where people listed as donors told THE CITY they were either reimbursed or had their identities used without their consent in what appear to be illegal “straw” donations that improperly secured matching funds for Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign.
Abbasova played a key role, prosecutors allege, in working with Adams to steer Turkish campaign contributions through U.S. straw donors. Greco’s specific role in Chinese community straw donations remains unknown, but if anything her role in the Adams fundraising operation was more significant.
“They were both involved in fundraising, but I would say Winnie was the more prolific fundraiser and connector,” said a source familiar with the inner workings of Borough Hall during Adams’ tenure. “She had relationships in those Chinese enclaves in the city but also abroad — which is how she was able to facilitate these trips to certain cities in China.”
Greco’s attorney on the federal probe, Steven Brill, said he hasn’t seen the emails from Greco’s time at Brooklyn Borough Hall.
“But it would be no surprise if they showed that Winnie — given her deep dedication to the Asian community in New York — assisted Eric Adams as borough president on organizing and facilitating travel itineraries to and from China,” he said.
Frenetic Activity
Despite serving as an unpaid volunteer, Greco early on was treated as something more than this. Just months into her tenure, she was shown designs for a business card by borough hall staffers that identified her as the “American/Chinese Ambassador” for Adams. The card contained an image of the Brooklyn seal, according to a mockup contained in the emails.
She would later get a government email address to go with it: ChinaAmbassador@brooklynbp.nyc.gov.
It was also early on that Greco established what would be a close relationship between borough hall and the Chinese Consul General in Manhattan — the same office that the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s Office suggested played a substantial role in guiding the former deputy chief of staff in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, Linda Sun.
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Sun was indicted last month for allegedly serving as an unregistered foreign agent to China, and the indictment contains numerous communications she had with officials in that office where she bragged of blocking out Taiwanese government reps from the governor’s office.
Following the indictment, Hochul said she asked the administration of President Joe Biden to expel Chinese Consul General Huang Ping from the New York City office. Ping did depart from the role, but federal officials said it was a planned departure at the end of his tenure.
Greco’s connections to the Consul General’s office go back at least to the start of Adams’ tenure at Borough Hall. During the first week of June 2014, after Greco, Adams and other staffers returned from an 11-day trip to China paid for by a nonprofit Greco set up to forward the Brooklyn archway project, she organized a two-hour meeting for the borough president and his top aides with then Consul General Sun Guoxiang.
It was the first of many requests from Greco for Adams to attend events with or send invitations to officials at the Consulate General.
“I will talk to General Counsel Sun about supporting our archway as well as Chinese companies that are in US [sic] to support us financially,” Greco wrote in an email to Adams and other borough hall officials on June 9, 2014.
Such communications were common over the years. In April 2016, Greco asked for formal letters inviting then Consul General Qiyue Zhang and three other top consular officials to a Mid-Autumn Festival event Adams was hosting in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Adams, who had awarded Zhang citations in September 2015 and February 2016, responded to Greco and his staffers, saying, “Yes and expedite this.”
Later that year, in August, Greco made a last-minute pitch to the Brooklyn Museum on behalf of a delegation from the Overseas Chinese History Museum of China seeking space the following month for an exhibit on Sun Yat-sen, whom she described as the “leader of China’s republican revolution.”
When museum officials balked at the quick turnaround, longtime Adams advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin made a second attempt, writing to Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak that she wanted to “ensure that the museum was fully aware of Borough Hall’s interest in supporting the request, if it were possible.”
Pasternak wrote back on Aug. 5 that the European galleries they requested for the exhibition were occupied, but that regardless, “no museum can not [sic] turn around an exhibition in one month. It normally takes at least 2-3 years.”
In the end, the exhibit opened on Sept. 7 at Brooklyn Borough Hall, co-organized by Zhang, who gave a speech.
All the while, Greco was given more and more latitude in leading Adams’ efforts to secure the archway for Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood, the emails show.
In one missive, Greco asked Borough Hall personnel to make clear in a letter to government officials in Beijing’s Chaoyang District that she is “in charge” of the archway project, which included securing the archway as a gift from the district’s leaders.
“This part of the letter will allow me to work faster and more efficient [sic] with the government of the Chaoyang District, particularly their Foreign Affairs Overseas Department,” Greco wrote in an October 2016 email to an Adams aide.
In addition to organizing Adams’ multiple trips to China over the years, Greco also traveled to China solo multiple times or with borough hall officials other than Adams.
One such trip took place in November 2018, when Greco’s archway organization funded a nearly two-week trip to China for Greco, Adams’ counsel Ama Dwimoh, and his special assistant Marcus Harris, the emails show.
The organization, the Sino-America New York Brooklyn Archway Association, lost its tax-exempt status after failing to file IRS returns in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Through this time, Greco continued to pepper borough hall with requests for proclamations, letters and invitations for people in the Chinese government or the Chinese American community.
She also made frequent requests for Adams to be interviewed by Chinese news outlets, including state-owned TV stations and gave Adams explicit guidance on which community events he should attend.
She said yes to a celebration of the Sing Tao Daily newspaper in New York in 2015, whose publisher, Robin Mui, was a board member of the archway group. In July of that year, Adams issued Mui a citation honoring his work and awarded the newspaper a proclamation.
Greco also gave a thumbs up to a 2019 event with the America Ting Jiang Association at the Royal Queen restaurant at the New World Mall in Flushing — which she described in an email as “one of the important associations in Fujian” and also “very supportive.”
Her efforts included a bid to organize a meeting in September 2015 between Adams and the “Qingyuan committee” of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Greco identified one member of the delegation as the “Deputy Chief of United Front Work Department,” a long-running communist party arm designed to influence political developments in other countries, but the records don’t make clear whether that meeting occurred.
Making her flurry of activity more unusual is that she undertook it with no other publicly recorded source of income.
At one point, in 2018, Greco’s emails were coming in so fast and furious that Adams himself asked her to slow down.
“Every letter request from you can’t be an urgent request,” he wrote in August 2018. “We have to get request [sic] in with enough time so we don’t have to always rush.”
Blurred Lines
That same year, Greco expanded her prior fundraising efforts to include Adams 2021 mayoral campaign, again in an unpaid, volunteer role, according to his campaign.
As the indictment describes in the case of Abbasova, the fundraising and networking roles of Greco’s efforts often blurred together.
In early June 2018, executives of a real estate firm named New Empire Corp, sent Greco a pre-written letter that they wanted Adams to sign as an endorsement of a Sunset Park development project they were pitching to the MTA. as part of a competitive bid process.
It read in part: “Your resume of development projects is impressive and we look forward to seeing this project completed.”
On June 5th, Greco sent the letter to Adams’ communications team asking for them to assist the developer.
The emails don’t reveal whether Adams signed the letter of endorsement, but New Empire’s chairman and CEO, Bentley Zhao, would go on to co-host a fundraiser for Adams’ mayoral campaign, in August 2021, that brought in over $32,000, according to Campaign Finance Board records.
Greco also sat on the board of directors of Adams’ borough hall nonprofit, the One Brooklyn Fund, for which she helped raise funds at the same time as she was seeking donations for her archway group.
A striking example of Greco’s many roles colliding came in her early years with Adams, when she organized a Lunar New Year celebration at the New Spring Garden Restaurant in Sunset Park in March 2015 that was hosted by Adams.
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It was ostensibly a community celebration, but Greco sought donations of $800 per table to go to her archway group — including a solicitation in writing from the One Brooklyn Fund, where she served on the board.
The speakers included Adams, Greco and the Chinese consul general, while citations were awarded by Adams to a half dozen groups and individuals that included Timmy Moy — a donor to both the One Brooklyn Fund and to Greco’s organization.
Adams also awarded citations to Greenland USA, the Chinese construction firm that had newly taken over the Barclay’s Center development in downtown Brooklyn. He had met company representatives, whose reps he had met in China on a trip with Greco the previous year.
Also awarded a citation was the Archway Association, Greco’s organization.
