Winnie Greco, wearing a dark blue ball cap and holding a cellphone and a bottle of water, at a campaign rally for Eric Adams last month in Queens.
Winnie Greco was the mayor’s former director of Asian affairs at City Hall and one of his best fund-raisers. Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York Times

By Bianca PallaroJay Root and Emma G. Fitzsimmons, New York Times

A close adviser to Mayor Eric Adams was suspended from his re-election campaign on Wednesday after giving a journalist cash tucked inside a potato chip bag.

The adviser, Winnie Greco, who was the mayor’s former director of Asian affairs at City Hall and one of his best fund-raisers, had returned to the campaign trail as a volunteer during Mr. Adams’s run for a second term. She had been at the center of controversy after the F.B.I. raided her homes last year as part of a federal investigation into possible Chinese government interference in the 2021 mayor’s race.

On Wednesday, Ms. Greco attended an event with Mr. Adams in Harlem and gave more than $100 in a red envelope stashed inside the snack bag to a reporter for The City, according to an article in the online news outlet. The City promptly reported the incident to the city’s Department of Investigation, and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn contacted the newspaper’s lawyers, according to the newspaper’s account.

Read the full story here


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