Brothers Phil and Terence Banks — both targets of a federal investigation into close allies of Mayor Eric Adams — have a taste for the finer things and like to hang out at swanky Manhattan nightclubs, The Post has learned.
Phil Banks, the city’s deputy mayor for public safety, frequents Casa Cipriani, a posh, members-only establishment on South Street that charges patrons a cool $3,900 per year in dues — on top of the one-time initiation fee of $2,000, according to sources and the club website.
Banks raked in about $252,000 last year for his work with the Adams administration, which the retired cop then stacks on top of his annual NYPD pension of about $135,000, online payroll records show.
He and Terence, a retired MTA employee, also regularly hit up Club Macanudo, an upscale cigar club on 63rd Street owned by a cigar maker of the same name.
His ritzy habits led one former co-worker to call Phil a “greedy ex-boss who thinks he’s above the law.”
“He has expensive taste — cigars, cognac, watches — but he doesn’t like to pay,” another source, a retired police supervisor, told The Post.
“That’s why he got in trouble the first time for hanging out with Jeremy Reichberg,” the supervisor continued, referencing the City Hall fundraiser who was convicted as part of a massive NYPD corruption scandal in 2016.
“You would think Banks would have learned,” the source said.
The brothers — who are also siblings of Schools Chancellor David Banks, an Adams appointee also under federal investigation — have come under tremendous scrutiny due to their entanglement in the wide-ranging probe that brought agents to their doors last week.
None have been accused of wrongdoing.
Members of the Banks family have long been close friends of the mayor, who was mentored by their cop father earlier in his own police career, Adams said Tuesday.
Terence Banks — a former MTA official who retired last year and collects an $88,000 annual pension, according to SeeThroughNY — started his own consulting firm, The Pearl Alliance, after his retirement.
“For a man who left the MTA, he led a bougie lifestyle — from jet-setting to Martha’s Vineyard, to surrounding himself with some of New York’s elite,” one source said of Terence, who in his last year with the MTA made $127,000 as a mid-level supervisor.
Public records show that his clients have millions of dollars’ worth of contracts with the city. Terence — who is not a registered lobbyist — scrubbed his businesses’ website after the feds launched their raids.
He reportedly also raised piles of cash for Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign.
Federal authorities have not made clear the ultimate goal of last week’s raids, subpoenas and inquiries. But sources have said that investigators from the Southern District of New York are looking into rampant corruption and influence peddling.
Investigators also want to know whether Phil Banks helped steer any city contracts to his brother’s clients, sources have said.
Phil Banks isn’t the only Adams aide under investigation pulling a pension and a city salary.
Timothy Pearson, a retired NYPD inspector who now advises Adams on public safety — and who also had his home raided last week — pulls a $124,000 pension from his cop career on top of a generous salary of about $242,000.
As far as assets go, Phil Banks also has more than $1 million in stock from companies such as Tesla, Apple, McDonald’s and various kinds of cryptocurrency, according to annual conflict of interest disclosures obtained by The Post.
And he earns tens of thousands each year off his three New York City rental properties, the disclosures show.
He also appears to have property in Fort Myers, Florida, that he runs to on the weekends.
Once a rising star in the NYPD — and a finalist to be former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s police commissioner — Phil’s career was derailed when the feds targeted him in another corruption probe more than a decade ago.
Investigators found “hundreds of thousands” of dollars’ worth of questionable deposits in his bank accounts while they were looking into his close relationship with two businessmen being probed for giving gifts to high-ranking NYPD members in exchange for favors.
The gathering storm pushed Banks out the door — and he abruptly resigned in October 2014 instead of taking a promotion to the NYPD’s No. 2 spot.
The FBI later said the $300,000 in transactions reflected all the hallmarks of money laundering.
Neither Phil or Terence Banks or Pearson returned requests for comment Wednesday. Lawyers for Terence and Phil Banks referred The Post to earlier statements.
Timothy D. Sini, a lawyer for Terence, said: “We have been assured by the government that Mr. Banks is not a target of this investigation.”
Phil Banks lawyer Benjamin Brafman said he believes his client: “has zero criminal liability in this case — zero.”
Phil and Terence’s reputation has left cops shaking their heads — and joking that the Banks brothers should be called the James brothers, in a nod to the famous outlaw robbers from the Old West.
Both also show up at Nexus Club New York, another private membership club on Church Street that spans an entire city block and boasts four different restaurants, a gym, a spa and a simulated indoor driving range, among other things.
Phil doesn’t have a membership himself, sources said, but uses his brother’s account.
“Phil likes to hang out in expensive restaurants and smoke cigars,” the source said. “As long as someone else is paying.”
