(Reuters) -Ingrid Lewis-Martin, a former top aide to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, has been indicted on bribery charges, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said on Thursday.
“We allege that Ingrid Lewis-Martin engaged in a long-running bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy scheme by using her position and authority as the Chief Advisor to the Mayor of the City of New York,” Bragg said in a statement.
Lewis-Martin resigned from her post last weekend. Her lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Adams himself was hit with an unrelated five-count federal corruption indictment in September. The mayor allegedly accepted illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel from Turkish nationals seeking to influence him. Adams has denied wrongdoing and says he will fight the charges in court.
Bragg’s office alleges that Lewis-Martin took bribes from two real estate investors in exchange for expediting construction permits for businesses they owned.
Specifically, prosecutors say, the investors gave $100,000 in checks in August 2023 to Lewis-Martin’s son, who deposited them in a bank account he shared with Lewis-Martin and used the funds to buy a Porsche.
Lewis-Martin allegedly asked the investors to use the encrypted messaging app Signal to conceal the scheme, Bragg’s office said.
(Reporting by Brendan Pierson, Costas Pitas and Ismail Shakil; Editing by Caitlin Webber, Franklin Paul and Jonathan Oatis)
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