New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been charged with bribery, wire fraud and receiving illegal foreign campaign donations from foreign businessmen and a Turkish official.

The indictment by federal prosecutors was unsealed on Thursday after FBI agents, earlier in the day, conducted a search in the mayor’s official residence at Gracie Mansion and confiscated his phone, the New York Times reported.

According to the prosecutors, Mr Adams also allegedly received luxury travel in exchange for official favours and manipulated a municipal funding programme for personal gains.

It was alleged that a Turkish official made “straw donations” like small payments from state residents that enabled Mr Adams to claim over “$10 million in public funds” under a scheme meant to provide extra rewards for smaller donations from locals.

Prosecutors said the investigation began in 2021 and that Mr Adams began committing the act when he was an elected senior official in Brooklyn, and went on even after continued after he became mayor.

However, Mr Adams, a Democrat and the first mayor in the city’s history to be indicted while in office, in a speech at his official residence, insisted that he would not resign.

At a news conference, Mr Adams criticised the federal authorities investigating the case and denied breaking the law.

He described the charges against him as “entirely false [and] based on lie” and urged people in the state to hear his defence.

“Everyone who knows me knows that I follow campaign rules and I follow the law,” he stated, insisting that “I will continue to do my job as mayor.”

Condemning the FBI agents for trying to “create a spectacle” at the mayor’s residence, Mr Adam’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, wondered why a dozen agents were sent “to pick up a phone when we would have happily turned it in.”

Speaking at a press conference later in the day, U.S. Attorney Damien Williams said the mayor participated in corruption involving bribery by foreigners for almost a decade, thereby violating public trust.

Mr Williams said, “This was a multi-year scheme to buy favour with a single New York City politician on the rise,” and assured that the investigation continues and others involved “will be held accountable.”