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BROOKLYN (CN) — New York relied heavily on a governor’s office staffer to secure masks, gloves and ventilators during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to witness testimony at the ex-aide’s federal trial in Brooklyn.
Linda Sun, once a high-ranking aide for former Governor Andrew Cuomo, is charged with steering contracts for that personal protective equipment to her family in exchange for kickbacks. Prosecutors say she did so when New Yorkers were most vulnerable, as the Covid-19 virus ravaged the Northeast at the start of 2020 and governments scrambled for supplies.
“It was a very competitive market,” Sean Carroll, formerly the chief procurement officer of New York’s Office of General Services, testified Wednesday.
Because of that competition, Cuomo signed an executive order that streamlined the process for sending state contracts to protective equipment vendors. Carroll said vetting vendors became “much less rigorous” at the time as a result.
Sun’s broader job for the government was managing New York’s relationship with Chinese Americans. When Covid-19 hit, Carroll said Sun was called upon to use her connections to help the state meet its “extreme” need for health supplies.
“It was in the millions and millions of items on the PPE side,” Carroll recalled.
Sun seemed to deliver, though. In March of 2020, she wrote an email to Carroll recommending a Chinese company called High Hope, which she claimed came recommended by the commerce department of Jiangsu, a province in East China.
“You took this seriously?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Solomon asked Wednesday.
“Yes, of course,” Carroll replied.
Carroll said Sun played an important role in procuring equipment at this time, serving both as a liaison to the Chinese companies and also as a translator. If Sun said a particular vendor was recommended by a Chinese governmental body, “we took that to heart,” Carroll said.
Sun encouraged the team to go into business with High Hope, writing in the subject line of a subsequent email: “Linda Sun already checked everything over.”
High Hope was eventually approved as a vendor, and New York entered into a $5 million contract with the company in exchange for roughly 3 million FDA 510(k) face masks.
What Sun failed to mention was that her second cousin worked at the company — a conflict of interest she knowingly failed to report, according to prosecutors. The government claims the cousin later paid Sun’s husband Chris Hu approximately $2.3 million in kickbacks.
And the Jiangsu Department of Commerce likely never recommended High Hope in the first place. Rather, it was Sun who falsified documents suggesting as much to hide her ties to the company, prosecutors claim.
The government says Hu, who is a co-defendant in the case, also has ties to a vendor that got a contract to supply New York with ventilators — another conflict Sun failed to report.
Carroll testified Wednesday that it is up to state employees to report conflicts of interest, even during times of slackened scrutiny like the pandemic. He also acknowledged that at that time, “for the right product for the right price,” there was a “real possibility” a conflicted contract could have gone through anyway albeit after further vetting.
Sun’s attorneys have argued that, unlike many contracts New York entered into at the time, the ones Sun recommended actually delivered.
“She was working around the clock for fellow New Yorkers,” her lawyer Jarrod Schaeffer said during opening arguments. “She helped New Yorkers locate millions of dollars of PPE.”
The supposed Covid-19 scam is just one of many self-dealing accusations prosecutors have levied against Sun. She and her husband are standing a monthlong trial on charges including violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.
Prosecutors claim Sun acted as an unregistered agent for the Chinese government. In one instance, she’s accused of adding a Chinese official to a private call concerning New York’s pandemic response. In another, prosecutors say she altered a state press release by cutting language that referred to Taiwan as a country.
In exchange, Sun purportedly received properties in Long Island and Hawaii, designer accessories, a 2024 Ferrari Roma and even Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a Chinese government official’s personal chef.
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