A prominent Manhattan doctor who serves on the city’s Board of Health and owns a company with municipal business dealings gave a combined $10,000 to Mayor Adams’ legal defense trust with his wife last fall, the Daily News has learned.
The late November contributions from Angelo and Svetlana Acquista contrast sharply with city rules restricting who can legally give money to the trust, which Adams launched to cover legal fees he’s incurring from an FBI investigation into his 2021 campaign.
Under the rules, which are enforced by the Conflicts of Interest Board, individuals engaged in business with the city are prohibited from donating any money to Adams’ defense trust. The rules also bar spouses of any individuals with municipal business dealings from giving to it.
Still, Adams’ trust accepted a $5,000 donation from Angelo Acquista on Nov. 28, the maximum amount allowed by law, and another $5,000 from Svetlana Acquista the next day, according to the trust’s first public disclosure released this month.
The Acquistas’ donations rolled in even though the trust paid the Artus Group, a private detective firm, $18,664 to do “vetting and investigative services” to ensure the legality of all contributions, the disclosure revealed.
Asked about the Acquistas, Vito Pitta, counsel of Adams’ defense fund, said Monday the mayor’s team is confident their contributions were legal because Angelo Acquista owns the company that does business with the city via a so-called beneficiary controlled trust, a type of investment vehicle.
Still, Pitta said “out of an abundance of caution,” the trust returned Angelo Acquista’s donation on Jan. 11 — 44 days after it was made — because the mayor’s team is unsure whether he qualifies as an Adams “subordinate” given his role on the Board of Health, a post the mayor appointed him to in March 2023. Under city law, mayoral subordinates are also legally prohibited from donating to the defense trust.
Adams’ trust didn’t return the donation from Svetlana Acquista, though.
Pitta said it opted not to give her contribution back because the mayor’s team believes the doing business restriction shouldn’t apply to Angelo Acquista due to the beneficiary controlled trust ownership structure, thereby not preventing his wife from donating.
Donors to Adams’ defense trust must sign a statement affirming they’re not subordinates of the mayor or engaged in city business dealings. Pitta wouldn’t say how the Acquistas filled out those forms.
Angelo Acquista, a pulmonary doctor and diet book author who used to serve in top positions at Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital, hasn’t returned requests for comment via his attorney since last week.
Conflicts of Interest Board Executive Director Carolyn Miller declined to comment on specifics related to the Acquistas’ donations, citing agency confidentiality protocols.
But asked whether a person’s barred from donating to a defense fund if they’re the beneficiary controlled trust owner of a company that does business with the city, Miller said “a legal defense trust is prohibited from accepting a donation from any person listed on the Doing Business Database” as well as such a person’s spouse without “any limitation as to why they are on there.”
Miller wouldn’t say whether Acquista’s role as a Board of Health mayoral appointee makes him an Adams subordinate.
According to Conflicts of Interest Board rules, a mayoral legal defense trust must return any donation it is not legally permitted to accept and “shall be subject to a civil penalty, which for the first offense shall be not more than $5,000, for the second offense not more than $15,000, and for the third and subsequent offenses not more than $30,000.”
The revelation about the Acquista donations comes after the news outlet Hell Gate reported last week that the wives of Jack and Joseph Cayre, top executives at the Midtown Equities real estate firm, gave $5,000 each to the mayor’s defense trust in December even though their husbands are listed in the city’s doing business database. Pitta told the outlet the trust will return those contributions “if we determine that these are in fact prohibited.”
In addition to his trust donation, Angelo Acquista gave $1,250 to Adams’ reelection campaign this past June 13.
Under separate city law, individuals with municipal business dealings are prohibited from giving a mayoral campaign more than $400. Pitta said Adams’ campaign isn’t returning any portion of Acquista’s June donation due to its belief that he should not be impacted by the doing business restriction.
A spokesman for the city Campaign Finance Board, which enforces local campaign finance law, declined to comment Monday, citing confidentiality rules.
The city’s doing business donation restrictions are designed to prevent “pay-to-play” in municipal government, according to the Campaign Finance Board.
The company Angelo Acquista owns via a beneficiary controlled trust is called Luyster Creek, LLC.
According to the city’s doing business database, the entity has been involved in real estate-related business dealings with the municipal government since March 1, 2023. The database doesn’t make clear exactly what form that business has taken.
But property records reviewed by The News show the Luyster Creek entity owns an industrial site in Astoria, Queens that the city Department of Sanitation has for years leased space at. The agency also has plans to build a $283 million garage at the site, per capital plan records.
Angelo Acquista identified himself as a “manager” of the Luyster Creek entity in a 2017 document he signed that spelled out the details of a $20 million mortgage the company took out on the property.
The Acquistas’ donations were part of more than $666,000 the mayor’s defense trust reported raising between its mid-November launch and Dec. 31.
The mayor established the trust after FBI agents on Nov. 2 raided the home of Brianna Suggs, his top political fundraiser, as part of a probe into whether the Turkish government funneled illegal cash into his 2021 campaign coffers. Days after the Suggs raid, agents stopped the mayor in the street and seized his electronics, including two cellphones.
Neither Adams nor anyone connected to his campaign have been formally accused of wrongdoing.
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