Top Adams administration official Jesse Hamilton pressured the city government’s top real estate broker to put one of his friends in charge of its dealings with the city, who in turn used that role to sideline a competitor and maximize her own commissions, according to a bombshell complaint filed late Monday.
The complaint was brought by the competitor, JRT, which alleges that Cushman & Wakefield executive Diana Boutross,was picked at Hamilton’s “behest” in late 2023 to take over brokering commercial leases between the city government and private property owners.
In September, investigators seized phones and other electronic devices from Hamilton, Boutross and Ingrid Lewis-Martin, then Adams’ chief adviser at City Hall, after they landed at JFK returning from a trip to Japan.
The seizures were part of a probe led by the Manhattan district attorney’s office scrutinizing possible corruption in the city’s commercial property leasing sector, according to sources. No charges have been filed, but Lewis-Martin was indicted by the Manhattan DA last month on bribery charges unrelated to the commercial property dealings; she has pleaded not guilty.
Both Cushman & Wakefield and JRT are on a contract with Hamilton’s agency, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, under which both firms are supposed to share in the commissions brokerage firms can net from locking in leases between the city and private property owners.
JRT’s suit claims Boutross, upon taking over Cushman & Wakefiedl’s account with the city, sought to “destroy the reputation” of JRT and collect that firm’s commissions. She was not as a defendant in the lawsuit.
According to JRT’s suit, Hamilton, whose DCAS post comes with oversight of the city government’s commercial leases, told Cushman & Wakefield in late December 2023 it would lose its commission deals with his agency unless Boutross was put in charge of the DCAS account.
He issued that directive after C & W’s previous manager on the account, Robert Giglio, announced he was retiring.
Once Boutross was in the high-powered role at the firm, Cushman & Wakefield “engaged in a premeditated campaign to block JRT from the DCAS account and destroy JRT’s reputation with DCAS, other City agencies, brokers, and landlords,” according to the suit.
This was allegedly done to block JRT from competing with Cushman & Wakefield in an upcoming competitive bid process, as well as to collect JRT’s 33.75% commission on deals, including on the Bronx Logistics Center, a warehouse in Hunts Point that the city government was in talks to buy for $750 million.
Although JRT was on the Logistics Center deal, around March 2024 Boutross allegedly blocked them from being involved and didn’t loop them on communications.
Around this time, Hamilton repeatedly walked through DCAS’s offices and told employees there, “Remember that the Bronx Logistics Deal is only a C&W deal!” according to the suit.
“If the Bronx Logistics Deal had closed, Boutross would have earned millions of dollars in commissions under the DCAS Contract, which was secured by C&W’s designation of JRT as its M/WBE subcontractor,” the complaint reads.
Eventually, during an April 8, 2024 meeting, an official at Cushman & Wakefield told JRT they would no longer be working with DCAS, blaming this on “performance issues” and saying they came at the request of DCAS.
A few weeks later, Boutross and two others at Cushman & Wakefield wrote an allegedly “defamatory email” to DCAS, against slamming JRT for “performance issues.”
The suit comes after Councilmember Lincoln Restler questioned Commissioner Louis Molina at an October oversight hearing.
“There was a contractor, JRT Realty, who has been working with Cushman & Wakefield for years, providing excellent services with Cushman while Bob Gigilo was the account lead,” Restler said at the hearing. “And since Diana Boutross came in, the subcontractors were slashed, the M/WBE contractor was slashed.”
Molina replied that he was “being informed by my team that that was not the case.”
Neither DCAS nor Hamilton immediately responded to a request for comment.