Mayor Mamdani announced his nomination of Nadia Shihata, a former federal prosecutor, as the commissioner of the Department of Investigation.
Shihata, who spent more than a decade at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, was one of the lead prosecutors of R&B musician R. Kelly.
The watchdog agency is tasked with rooting out corruption, fraud and waste in city government.
“There will be zero tolerance for self-enrichment or corruption in my City Hall,” Mamdani said at a City Hall press conference, nodding to the corruption scandals that plagued the Adams administration.
Shihata also served as the deputy chief of the office’s public integrity section, and most recently led a boutique law firm working on civil rights and sexual misconduct cases.
She said at the press conference that she sees leading the department as a “continuation and expansion of her previous work.
If approved by the City Council, she’d be the first woman of color to lead the department, Mamdani noted.
Jocelyn Strauber, the former DOI commissioner, left the role last month after Mamdani’s administration had initiated a hiring process that included reviewing other candidates for the commissioner job, the Daily News previously reported.
Strauber’s last day was Jan. 16.
Under Strauber, ex-Mayor Adams and his inner circle were the subject of DOI investigations, and their probe with the FBI of ex-Mayor Adams’ campaign fundraising helped lead to Adams’ federal corruption indictment in 2024. Those charges were later dropped at the behest of President Trump’s Department of Justice.
Also on Thursday, the City Council voted to confirm Mamdani’s pick for corporation counsel, Steve Banks.
Banks, formerly a Legal Aid Society attorney and an alum of the de Blasio administration, will assume the role at a critical time for the city. The Trump administration’s threats of cutting federal funding and sending immigration agents to the city.
