Top Adams administration official Jesse Hamilton pressured the city government’s main real estate broker to put one of his friends in charge of the firm’s business dealings with the city, and the pal in turn used that role to sideline a competitor and maximize her own commissions, according to a bombshell lawsuit filed late Monday.
The suit was brought by the competitor, JRT Realty, which alleges Cushman & Wakefield executive Diana Boutross was picked at Hamilton’s “behest” in late 2023 to take over running Cushman & Wakefield’s brokering of commercial leases between the city government and private property owners.
The Manhattan Supreme Court action comes after investigators in September 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 that can come from locking in leases between the city and private property owners.
JRT, a woman-owned business, claims in its suit that Boutross, upon being tapped to take over Cushman & Wakefield’s account with the city, sought to “destroy the reputation” of JRT and collect that firm’s commissions. The suit only names Cushman & Wakefield as a defendant, accusing it of defamation and tortious interference in business relations.
Cushman & Wakefield rep Mike Boonshoft said Tuesday that “any change in our work” with the city would only have come from its amended rules around contracting with minority- and/or woman-owned businesses, or so called MWBEs, “as well as other legitimate commercial reasons.”
“Now that we have a copy of the complaint, we will review and respond accordingly,” he added.
Neither DCAS nor Hamilton returned requests for comment.
Adams, who has pleaded not guilty to federal corruption charges as part of an unrelated case related to Turkey’s government, did not offer comment via a spokeswoman.
According to JRT’s suit, Hamilton, whose DCAS post comes with overseeing the city government’s commercial leasing program, told Cushman & Wakefield in late December 2023 it would lose its commission deals with his agency unless Boutross, a personal friend to him and Lewis-Martin, was put in charge of the DCAS account.
Hamilton, a key political ally to the mayor who has known him for decades, allegedly issued that directive after Cushman & Wakefield’s previous manager on the account, Robert Giglio, announced his retirement.
Boutross was subsequently installed in the role, and once in it, she and 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.
That included Boutross writing an April 2024 email to DCAS officials in which she “falsely stated” JRT would no longer be involved in brokering leases due to “performance issues,” according to a copy of the email included with the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also points to a DCAS bidding process that remains ongoing for the renewal of the commission-based contract that JRT is part of along with Cushman & Wakefield.
The new contract released by DCAS for bids in March 2024 eliminated a previous provision requiring that a certain number of deals be brokered by women-owned enterprises, an “abrupt change” that could “effectively eliminate” JRT from doing business with the agency, according to the suit.
Ultimately, JRT charges that Cushman & Wakefield and Boutross undertook the alleged smear campaign to try to gobble up for themselves the 33.75% commissions that JRT gets on property deals, including for the Bronx Logistics Center, a warehouse in Hunts Point that the city government was in talks to buy for $750 million.
Although JRT was supposed to be roped into the Logistics Center deal, Boutross allegedly sought to cut out the firm around March 2024 by not looping them in on key communications, the lawsuit says.
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.
Additionally, the suit notes Hamilton appeared in a promo video for the Logistics Center, which the Daily News first reported last year was produced by one of his DCAS aides and disseminated to city agencies.
In the video, which DCAS has said was “unauthorized,” Hamilton urged city agencies to formulate plans for leasing space at the center, which the city government ultimately never entered into a deal to buy after the unusual video emerged last year.
“If the Bronx Logistics Deal had closed, Boutross would have earned millions of dollars in commissions under the DCAS Contract,” JRT’s complaint reads.
The suit comes after Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler questioned DCAS Commissioner Louis Molina in October about why JRT had gotten “slashed” out of brokering deals after Boutross landed the account. Molina replied at the time he had been “informed by my team that that was not the case.”
In response to Monday’s lawsuit, Restler told The News that DCAS needs to be overhauled.
“This lawsuit further underscores the corruption involving the Adams administration and Diana Boutross and the need for a comprehensive investigation into the city’s shady real estate division,” Restler said.
