The United Arab Emirates’ government paid as much as $5,000 for Joel Eisdorfer, then a senior City Hall adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, to visit the Middle Eastern country for a summit in February, newly released documents show.
The visit, which Eisdorfer took with NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban and International Affairs Commissioner Edward Mermelstein, drew headlines at the time as it was among a number of overseas trips involving top Adams administration officials for which the mayor’s office declined to disclose funding details.
Eisdorfer, who stepped down in June from his post as Adams’ Jewish community liaison, had to submit a 2024 financial disclosure upon his resignation. That form reveals the UAE’s Interior Ministry picked up the tab for his trip.
Provided to the Daily News by the Conflicts of Interest Board this week, the form says the UAE Interior Ministry spent between $1,000 and $5,000 on Eisdorfer’s visit.
It’s still unclear who paid for Mermelstein and Caban to go. The NYPD and Adams’ office didn’t immediately return requests for comment Wednesday.
Eisdorfer, as well, didn’t return a request for comment.
Before leaving City Hall, Eisdorfer was in talks with Frank Carone, Adams’ ex-chief of staff, about joining his lobbying firm. However, a source familiar with the matter said Wednesday Eisdorfer is instead expected to start his own consulting firm. Eisdorfer has also said he plans to work on Adams’ 2025 reelection bid.
While in the UAE, Eisdorfer, Mermelstein and Caban attended the World Governments Summit, a UAE government-sponsored conference in Dubai where keynote speakers included Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
The Emirates News Agency said at the time that Caban and Eisdorfer met with UAE Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the summit to talk about plans to “enhance cooperation” between New York City and the Middle Eastern country, “particularly in security and law enforcement.”
The Adams officials’ visit came after the NYPD raised controversy for having officers participate in a training exercise in the UAE alongside members of the Akhmat special forces unit, a Chechenian militia that’s fighting in the war in Ukraine on Russia’s behalf. Ukraine’s government has accused Akhmat of war crimes.
Caban’s UAE visit followed three overseas trips he took in 2023 for which the NYPD declined to disclose funding details.
Caban’s 2023 financial disclosure, released earlier this month, revealed all three trips were bankrolled by foreign governments, including an October visit to Qatar.
The details about Eisdorfer’s UAE trip also come after Mermelstein’s 2023 financial disclosure, released earlier this month, showed Azerbaijan’s government paid for him and Rana Abbasova, a longtime Adams aide, to visit that country last fall in a previously unreported trip.
Abbasova has since been suspended from City Hall after her home was raided by FBI agents as part of a federal investigation into whether Turkey’s government pumped illegal donations into Adams’ 2021 campaign coffers.
Mermelstein’s disclosure also revealed he accepted between $2,000 and $10,000 in gifts from Colombia’s government and the U.S.-Mexico Foundation to cover portions of a trip to Latin America he took with the mayor last year to learn about the root causes of the city’s migrant crisis.
The gifts came after the mayor, who also got parts of the Latin America visit comped by foreign entities, had told reporters his “team picked up their own costs” on that trip.
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