Mayor Adams fellow Dems’ 2012 trip to Turkey-Azerbaijan was bankrolled by government entities: disclosures

Mayor Adams’ financial disclosures from his time as a state senator do not include details about a 2012 trip he took to Azerbaijan and Turkey — even though two other lawmakers who accompanied him reported that their travel was bankrolled by government-owned entities in the countries and included meetings with local government officials, according to public filings reviewed by the Daily News.

The previously unreported details about the overseas visit come as the FBI continues to investigate Adams’ 2021 campaign over allegations that it conspired with the Turkish government to pump illegal foreign cash into the campaign’s coffers via straw donors. Adams has not been accused of any wrongdoing as part of the investigation.

As first reported by The News, one wrinkle the feds are honing in on is Adams’ penchant for traveling to Turkey, a country he says he has visited at least a half dozen times.

The 2012 trip to Azerbaijan and Turkey was first brought to light last week, when Adams told reporters he went to the two countries as part of a “Senate delegation” visit.

Asked Tuesday to elaborate on the travel, Adams said in a briefing at City Hall that Brooklyn Assembly members Alec Brook-Krasny and Steve Cymbrowitz went with him on the trip. The mayor, who represented a section of Brooklyn in the state Senate between 2007 and 2013, also confirmed the trip was government funded, but did not elaborate.

Alec Brook-Krasny

In their 2012 financial disclosure forms, Cymbrowitz and Brook-Krasny both reported they went on a “fact-finding and solidarity mission” that year to Azerbaijan, whose government is closely politically aligned with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime. Both of their forms say their Azerbaijan visit was paid for by SOCAR, the country’s state-owned oil and gas company, and that they met with government officials while there. The forms do not make clear how much the trip cost, other than saying it exceeded $1,000 per person.

Cymbrowitz’s form also states that the same trip included a “fact-finding and solidarity mission to Israel and Turkey.” The form says “meetings with gov’t officials” took place during the Turkey and Israel legs of the trip, too, and lists Holon, a city in Israel, and Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, as the sources of the funding for those visits.

Tim Lantz, a spokesman for Brook-Krasny, confirmed to The News on Tuesday that both his boss and Adams were with Cymbrowitz during the Azerbaijan and Turkey visits listed in the financial disclosures.

Nonetheless, Adams’ 2012 state Senate financial disclosure form includes no information about the visits to either Azerbaijan or Turkey.

Asked in his Tuesday briefing why his 2012 form fails to mention the trip, Adams said he will “look at our Senate records.”

“If it wasn’t [disclosed], it was an oversight, and we’ll find out how we can modify it if that was the case,” he said.

Later Tuesday, spokespeople for Adams did not return requests for comment on the details included in the Cymbrowitz and Brook-Krasny disclosure forms.

Under state law, a lawmaker who “knowingly and willfully” fails to include required information in a financial disclosure form can face a civil fine up to $40,000.

Cymbrowitz, who left office in late 2022, said “now is not a good time to talk” when reached by phone after the mayor’s press conference. He did not return subsequent calls.

Asked which government officials they met with during the 2012 trip, Brook-Krasny said in a statement provided by Lantz: “I don’t recall the details of that particular trip from over 10 years ago.”

After becoming Brooklyn borough president in 2013, Adams reported in financial disclosure forms that he took trips in 2015 and 2016, respectively, to Turkey and Azerbaijan paid for by those country’s governments. During the 2021 mayoral campaign, Adams raised eyebrows over those trips from human rights watchdogs, who noted both countries’ governments have a history of human rights abuses.