Striking similarity between allegations against NYC mayor and former CNMI governor

Waiting for the federal government to indict the former governor of the CNMI for committing various federal crimes may not be in vain, after all. Last week, a nearly decade-long FBI investigation resulted in the indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams for crimes strikingly similar to what the FBI raided Ralph Torres and others over in 2019. The Adams investigation, just like the Torres investigation, dates back to 2015, and involves illegal travel, campaign contributions, election interference by a foreign government, and fraud.

The main difference is that one has been indicted, and the other has not.

Last week, a federal Grand Jury in New York handed down an indictment charging Mr. Adams with bribery, fraud, and something else paralleling accusations against the CNMI’s Torres: American election interference by foreigners. According to the indictment, since 2015, Mr. Adams had curried favor with several Turkish government and corporate nationals, accepting illegal gifts and contributions in exchange for lucrative favors for his Turkish friends in New York.

The indictment describes trips the mayor made early in his public service career to Turkey, where inappropriate and illegal relationships allegedly began and would expand and carry through his tenure as one of the nation’s most powerful and widely known mayors. Among the allegations are that Mr. Adams continuously concealed the source of millions of dollars in campaign contributions that illegally were being made by foreign nationals from Turkey who ended up receiving aid from the Adams government in New York City, sometimes in ways that placed the lives of New Yorkers in danger. One such event described in the indictment is the mayor’s use of his political muscle to get the New York Fire Department to pass a Turkish-owned building in New York that would not have otherwise passed inspection.

Sound familiar? It should.

The apparent start of the Adams investigation and the building of his illegal relationships with Turkish nationals nearly coincides with the FBI’s monitoring of Ralph Torres’ movements in office that led to Imperial Pacific International CNMI LLC opening its scandal–ridden Best Sunshine Casino in Saipan in 2015. That movement began with Mr. Torres’ 180-degree flip flop as a senator opposed to gambling to one of gambling’s main proponents following his junket to Macau just before the CNMI Legislature changed the Commonwealth’s gambling prohibitions to allow for casino gambling.

Investigative reports in Bloomberg and The Palm Beach Post would be the first to reveal the early corruption accusations against Mr. Torres and his cronies: that the young governor was tied to illegal entanglements with the Chinese Communist Party in several ways, most of which through the new casino. Then, one of his cabinet members – Edith Deleon Guerrero (the current Senate president and at the time, the secretary of labor) – suddenly was fired then went public with her report that Mr. Torres wanted her to literally make some Chinese labor problems go away. She refused to force Chinese laborers who were working on the construction of the Best Sunshine Casino in Garapan and had grievances against IPI to get on a plane back to China, so the governor fired her. The body and limbs count only grew from that now-unfinished behemoth.

For several years, Mr. Torres basked in the power and influence that came from IPI’s largesse toward anyone his administration deemed instrumental to keeping the governor in power. That also meant the fear that anyone willing to oppose him would become the victim of silencing campaigns, whether that was firing a detractor or mutilating a political opponent’s ability to make a living in the CNMI. And so, public opposition to the governor did not become louder than the voices of very few courageous and pioneering citizens until the FBI raided his office, home, IPI offices, and the law firm of his brothers. That was in November of 2019, five years ago.

The investigation into Adams apparently began before the Torres investigation, a point that might comfort spectators in the Marianas who have been waiting for the U.S. Attorney for Guam and the CNMI to secure an indictment against the former governor.

Since that raid, Kandit brought to you a ledger leaked out of IPI that showed monthly payments by the casino company to several politicians and their families, businesses throughout the Commonwealth, and even connected to a newspaper. The casino is Chinese owned. And according to that Palm Beach investigative report mentioned above, its owners are connected to the CCP.

Following Kandit’s report on the ledger, we also reported to you about casino-related contributions made to Mr. Torres’ 2018 and 2022 campaigns.

According to the warrant issued by the federal court in the 2019 raids, among the crimes the FBI believed Mr. Torres committed involved the Foreign Interference in a United States Election federal statute. IPI is a Hong Kong company registered in Bermuda, but Chinese owned.

All things considered, what amazed me most after reading the Adams indictment was how little, by comparison to the money involved in the alleged corruption of Ralph Torres, Mr. Adams was accused of profiting illegally. Here was the mayor of America’s most dynamic and magical city being accused by a federal Grand Jury of crimes that are similar but pale in comparison to the magnitude of criminal activity alleged against the former governor of America’s smallest commonwealth.

And if it took the Feds nearly 10 years to take down a politician with fewer allegations of crime than the allegations against Mr. Torres, then I suppose there remains hope. Maybe the Feds haven’t given up on this one after all.