The wealthy hotel owner accused of bribing former Eric Adams chief of staff Frank Carone got a judge’s permission to attend the World Cup final at MetLife Stadium while out on $8 million bond.
A lawyer for Yan Po Zhu, who also goes by Andy Zhu, made the ask of Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto during a status conference Wednesday in the public corruption case, and after a brief back-and-forth about scheduling, he got his goal.
Zhu, his employee Crystal Chen, Carone, and Carone’s brother Anthony all appeared before the judge a week after they were indicted on charges they manipulated the city’s migrant crisis for financial gain. Zhu’s release conditions would otherwise bar him from traveling outside the five boroughs, Westchester or Long Island.
Carone is accused of taking $120,000 in bribes to steer an emergency shelter contract to the Microtel, a 75-room hotel owned by Zhu on 40th Ave. near 29th St. in Long Island City. All four have pleaded not guilty to their roles in the scheme.
Feds claim that as efforts by Yan Po Zhu (center) and Crystal Chen to secure an emergency contract were stalling, Zhu leveraged his personal relationship with Frank Carone (2nd from left). Around June 3, 2022, Zhu and Carone socialized at Zhu’s Nassau County residence, as pictured here, and Zhu solicited Carone’s assistance in obtaining an emergency shelter contract for the Microtel. (EDNY Court Evidence)
Zhu, a Chinese citizen, also featured briefly in the trial of Linda Sun, a former aide to Governors Cuomo and Hochul accused of acting as a foreign agent, who who steered New York’s official policy toward Chinese interests. Sun’s trial ended in a mistrial in December.
Zhu and Sun were videotaped standing next to each other at a July 2019 protest against the Taiwanese president’s visit to New York, and Zhu also got Sun a ticket to a Beijing event celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, an FBI agent testified at her trial.
Wednesday’s status conference centered largely around when the case might go to trial. The Carone brothers said they wanted to bring their case to a jury quickly, and were opposed to stopping the clock on the federal court system’s 70-day, speedy-trial clock.
Prosecutors still must hand over four terabytes worth of discovery material to the defense, totaling about a million pages.
Frank Carone (unblurred, left) and Yan Po Zhu (unblurred, right) are pictured socializing around Sept. 24, 2022, at Zhu’s Nassau County residence. (EDNY Court Evidence)
“We do want the court to set a trial date as soon as the court is available,” Frank Carone’s lawyer, Andrew Goldstein, said.
Zhu and Chen’s lawyers aren’t ready for such a quick turnaround, though. Chen’s lawyer, Deirdre von Dornum, who subbed in for attorney John Carman, pointed out that their legal team doesn’t have the same resources as the Carones, nor have they known about the investigation for more than two years.
“I think it’ll be highly unfair for Ms. Chen to put her into that position,” she said.
Matsumoto set a tentative Aug. 24 trial date, but said she believed it’s “not a real date,” because of the complex nature of the case.
“It doesn’t seem logical to me to think about a speedy trial if you don’t even have the documents yet,” the judge said.