Politics

EXCLUSIVE: Property Mogul Indicted In NYC Mayor’s Office Bribery Scheme Listed As Chinese Intel Official

Unsplash// Ricardo

The property developer who allegedly bribed former New York Mayor Eric Adams’ chief-of-staff has served as a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence official and hobnobbed with party bosses for years, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.

Authorities arrested Andy Zhu, founder of New York-based real estate firm East Times Group (ETG), and three others including Adams’ former chief-of-staff, Frank Carone, on charges of fraud and money laundering in June, according to the indictment. Between October 2022 and September 2023, the property mogul allegedly bribed Carone and his brother with $120,000 to successfully pressure the New York City Department of Social Services to award Zhu’s Microtel Inn with a $6,825,000 “emergency shelter contract” in order to convert the Long Island City hotel into housing for “migrant asylum seekers.”

All the defendants have pleaded not guilty, and bail for Zhu, who is a Chinese national, was set at $8 million because of his “extensive foreign ties to a country that does not extradite to the United States,” prosecutors argued, the New York Post reported.

Chinese government and state media reports translated by the DCNF reveal that Zhu’s foreign ties include serving as an official within several arms of a CCP influence and intelligence agency called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), which Beijing uses to steer foreign policy and “gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC).

ETG and Zhu — who uses the Chinese names Yan Po Zhu and Zhu Sandong — could not be reached for comment and Zhu’s attorney, Stephen Scaring, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“United Front work is not a temporary political activity, but rather a major strategic undertaking that has long been directed by the CCP Central Committee,” Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a virologist who has accused the CCP of developing COVID-19 as a bioweapon, told the DCNF. “[T]he focus of United Front work includes not only influencing overseas Chinese communities, but also establishing long-term relationship networks with foreign governments, legislative bodies, universities, businesses, media organizations and other social institutions.”

‘Party And State Missions’ 

Zhu has repeatedly met with high-level Chinese government officials and holds several positions within UFWD arms, including serving as an “overseas committee member” of the UFWD’s All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), according to DCNF translations of Chinese government documents and Zhu’s social media posts.

“ACFROC is responsible for building relationship networks, conducting influence operations, identifying and cultivating individuals who may be useful to the CCP — including useful idiots or agents — and, when necessary, providing personnel, communication channels, or social-resource support for national security, intelligence, or other party and state missions,” said Yan, who hosts The Voice of Dr. Yan podcast.

Zhu has attended multiple New York welcome banquets for ACFROC leaders, including a May 2019 event for ACFROC’s chairman, Wan Lijun, during which Zhu was filmed on stage alongside the intelligence official and other attendees in front of a banner welcoming the ACFROC delegation, footage shows.

“Every overseas Chinese compatriot is a mobile calling card for China’s people and civilization,” Wan Lijun said, according to a DCNF translation of a May 2019 state media report concerning his visit.

Wan Lijun, who now also serves as a member of the CCP’s 20th Central Committee, encouraged attendees at the May 2019 banquet to serve as China’s “ambassadors” and said that ACFROC assumes six core functions including “fostering economic growth, safeguarding the rights and interests of overseas Chinese in accordance with the law, expanding overseas friendship, actively participating in political affairs, promoting Chinese culture and taking part in social construction,” according to a DCNF translation of the state media report.

During Wan Lijun’s tenure as ACFROC’s chairman, members of his federation have worked with “China’s FBI,” the Ministry of Public Security, to establish overseas Chinese police stations around the world, according to a DCNF translation of a Chinese government announcement. One of those police stations was established in 2022 within a Manhattan Chinese civic association called the America Changle Association, to which Zhu made a $100,000 donation in 2018, the New York Post reported.

America Changle Association’s former chairman, Lu Jianwang, who is also known as Harry Lu, was convicted in May 2026 of operating a police station for the Chinese government in New York City and awaits sentencing.

Zhu began meeting with high-level ACFROC leadership as early as 2012.

On his own social media, Zhu posted a photo of himself in February 2012 at a small welcome banquet in New York City for ACFROC’s deputy chairman, Li Zhuobin, in front of a banner welcoming the intelligence official and “ACFROC’s Overseas Committee Members From The New York Region,” according to a DCNF translation of a photo accompanying a post Zhu made on social media.

During the banquet, ACFROC overseas committee members proposed to establish the “U.S. East Coast ACFROC Overseas Advisors, Committee Members And Youth Committee Members Association,” according to a DCNF translation of a related February 2012 Chinese media report.

Zhu has since welcomed at least four other high-level Chinese government delegations to the U.S.

In one instance, Zhu attended a banquet welcoming ACFROC’s deputy chairman Li Bo to New York City in November 2018, during which he also appeared on stage alongside the ACFROC official, according to a DCNF translation of a Chinese state media report and accompanying photos.

The 2018 banquet was hosted by a New York-based Chinese civic association called the United Chinese Associations of Eastern U.S., which counts Zhu as an advisor and identified itself as subordinate to the UFWD’s China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA) when filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in September 2023, according to Department of Justice records and DCNF translations of Chinese government, state media and university reports.

Such welcome banquets simultaneously serve political, propaganda and intelligence purposes, Yan told the DCNF, including by “establishing and maintaining relationship networks” and by publicly demonstrating “political identification with, and organizational obedience to, the CCP.”

“Overseas Chinese organizations typically invite carefully selected individuals from local political, business, academic, media and other socially influential circles, creating opportunities for direct contact between CCP officials and targeted individuals, thereby facilitating the subsequent development of relationships, influence operations and other United Front activities,” Yan said. “At the same time, such activities also serve to identify potential collaborators, assess their political attitudes, social influence and accessibility, and provide the foundation for subsequent information collection, relationship cultivation and other party and state missions.”

Zhu has also met with senior Chinese government and ACFROC officials in China on several occasions, including with Zhang Yao, deputy chairwoman of ACFROC’s Fujian branch, in July 2023, which was during the year-long period that Zhu was allegedly making bribery payments to secure the “emergency shelter contract” for his hotel, according to the indictment and a DCNF translation of a Chinese government announcement.

On another occasion, Zhu met with UFWD and ACFROC officials in Beijing for a multi-day celebration of the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in September and October 2019, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and media reports. During those 2019 festivities, the Fujian-native attended a dinner reception in the Great Hall Of The People, a picnic at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse and a military parade in Tiananmen Square alongside high-level CCP and UFWD personnel including ACFROC’s current chairman Wan Lijun, photos accompanying the Chinese news reports show.

“United front organizations, such as [ACFROC], are not merely cultural or overseas Chinese affairs organizations,” Yan warned. “Rather, they constitute an important component of the CCP’s national strategic system, whose core objective is to employ all lawful and non-military means to serve the party’s political, security and national interests.”