Turkish government officials offered to fly Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso to Istanbul for free a few months after he took office in 2022 — but Reynoso told the Daily News on Monday he turned down the airplane ticket and returned another lavish gift they sent him out of legal and ethical concerns.
The revelation about Reynoso’s interactions — first reported by PIX11 — comes on the heels of federal prosecutors last week indicting Mayor Adams, Reynoso’s Brooklyn BP predecessor, on charges that he solicited and accepted more than $100,000 in business class airline tickets and other luxury gifts from Turkish nationals.
The feds allege the freebies amounted to bribes as Adams accepted them, both while borough president and mayor, in exchange for doing political favors for the Turkish government, including helping it resolve building safety issues at its Manhattan consulate.
In an interview with The News, Reynoso said representatives from the Turkish consulate came to his Borough Hall office in March 2022 to talk about issues related to Brooklyn’s Turkish diaspora.
“They met with me and just talked about wanting to take me to Istanbul, saying, ‘You should come out,’ and I said if I’m on vacation and decide Turkey is where I want to go, I can check in with you when I’m there,” he said. “They said, ‘no, no, we can take care of it.”
Reynoso, a former City Council member, said he rejected the offer because he had long been taught public officials like himself were under ethics laws prohibited from accepting gifts worth more than $50 from foreign government officials. “I knew these gifts were a lot more expensive than that,” he said.
But the Turkish officials tried again the next day, when Reynoso said someone from the consulate came back to his office wanting to gift him eight gold-plated porcelain tea cups. Reynoso said his general counsel at Borough Hall promptly returned the tea seats to the consulate.
“The decision I made was an individual one that speaks to my leadership in Borough Hall,” Reynoso said.
Adams has pleaded not guilty to the corruption charges.
In a press conference Monday, Alex Spiro, Adams’ lead attorney in the criminal case, was asked about Reynoso’s gift rejections.
“I’m glad he didn’t take the porcelain set. If he had, it would not have been a federal crime,” Spiro told reporters.