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Chinese agent didn't disclose meeting with top advisers to NYC Mayor Eric Adams

Chris Sommerfeldt, New York Daily News on

Published in News & Features

NEW YORK — Two of Mayor Eric Adams’ top advisers met in spring 2022 with a businessman who had months earlier registered as an agent for China’s government, but the executive didn’t disclose the sitdown to U.S. authorities, a reporting lapse that could raise legal concerns, the New York Daily News has learned.

Robin Mui, CEO of Sing Tao, a Chinese-owned media organization with offices in New York, said in a recent interview he didn’t inform the feds of his April 18, 2022, meeting with Adams advisers Ingrid Lewis-Martin and Winnie Greco because he doesn’t agree with the U.S. Justice Department’s determination that he’s a Chinese agent.

“I don’t disclose any meetings. I am a newspaper man, and I meet a lot of people,” said Mui. Despite his contention, Mui has been registered as a Chinese government agent since 2021, federal records show.

Steve Roberts, an expert in the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act, which imposes disclosure obligations on foreign agents, said it’s a “big gamble” for Mui to be “openly defiant” of the Justice Department’s reporting requirements in such a way. Even if Mui disagrees with the department’s determination that he’s an agent, the feds consider him one and thereby expect him under the FARA law to disclose any formal meetings he holds with U.S. public officials, Roberts said.

“The Justice Department does not care if you see the statute a different way. To not report activity even though you know there’s an obligation would seem to fall under the ‘knowing and willful’ definition,” Roberts said, referring to a section in the law that says foreign agents who knowingly omit “a material fact” from their disclosures can face a $10,000 fine and prison.

The meeting took place at Sing Tao’s office on Lafayette St. in SoHo, according to Lewis-Martin’s detailed daily schedules obtained by The News via a Freedom of Information Law request.

 

Mui, who’s an Adams campaign donor, described the confab as a “friendly gathering” and said he couldn’t recall specific issues they discussed.

Adams spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak said Greco and Lewis-Martin met with Mui to talk about ethnic media engagement between Adams’ administration and Sing Tao, but wouldn’t say whether they knew he was a foreign agent before their sitdown.

The Justice Department’s FARA unit didn’t return a request for comment.

Revelations about the Mui meet come after FBI agents raided Greco’s two Bronx homes in February as part of a federal investigation.

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