Boston Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson is subject of federal probe

Update: Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson was arrested on federal charges Dec. 6.

Federal authorities are conducting an investigation of Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson and have sent subpoenas to City Hall, according to two people with knowledge of the requests.

The nature and circumstances of the probe were not immediately known, and no criminal charges have been filed.

“I don’t want to comment on it,” Fernandes Anderson, a Democrat whose district spans Roxbury, Dorchester, the South End, and the Fenway, said when reached.

The Globe had requested public records from City Hall’s offices, including six months’ worth of subpoenas sent to city workers, as well as requests for written communications between Fernandes Anderson, her office, city attorneys, and the mayor’s office, for this story. In response, the city said some relevant records were not being released, citing a legal exemption for matters related to a law enforcement investigation.

City Hall authorities did acknowledge they had reached out to federal prosecutors regarding the records requests, and the US attorney’s office told them that ‘the integrity of a grand jury investigation would be impaired by disclosure of the information sought.’”

In her two-plus years on the City Council, Fernandes Anderson has been involved in several controversies, including a state ethics violation for hiring and promoting close relatives for City Hall jobs and, more recently, she has been accused of campaign finance transgressions.

Last year, Fernandes Anderson admitted to an ethics violation and agreed to pay a $5,000 fine for hiring and then giving raises to her sister and son, according to the Massachusetts Ethics Commission. She acknowledged she hired her sister as director of constituent services at an annual salary of $65,000 in January 2022, and then gave her a $5,000 raise and a $7,000 bonus a few months later, according to the agreement.

In June 2022, Fernandes Anderson also hired her son as an office manager at $52,000 a year. Nearly two weeks later, she increased his pay to $70,000.

Those moves violated a prohibition against “municipal employees participating in their official capacity in matters in which they know members of their immediate family have a financial interest,” according to the state Ethics Commission. Fernandes Anderson terminated her son and sister in 2022.

In November, state authorities found that Fernandes Anderson’s campaign committee violated Massachusetts campaign rules by failing to disclose deposits in a timely manner and receiving contributions in excess of state limits. Specifically, the Office of Campaign and Political Finance said the overwhelming bulk of $34,500 of campaign deposits between November 2023 and August 2024 were not filed with the state in a timely manner. Additionally, state authorities found three individual donors and a separate political committee exceeded the maximum allowed contributions to her campaign committee during the last two years. The state also said her campaign committee failed to clarify expenditure information in a timely manner.

In a statement Tuesday, City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune emphasized the importance of respecting the legal process.

“Drawing any conclusions right now would be premature,” she said. “As the president of Boston City Council and as a lawyer, I want to emphasize that any actions that are found to undermine the law must be taken very seriously. The work of the council will proceed without disruption and we will remain focused on the issues most important to residents, including acting with integrity as a body.”

The office of Mayor Michelle Wu did not respond to a request for comment.

At City Hall, City Councilor Erin Murphy said, “I have no idea what it’s about, so I’m not sure yet what they’re investigating.”

“So I think it’s important to find out what they’re looking into before I would make any opinion,” she said.

Fernandes Anderson is serving her second term on the council representing District 7, which historically has been anchored in Roxbury, a diverse, working class neighborhood where more than 80 percent of residents are people of color and the median family income hovers just above $40,000 a year.

She broke numerous barriers with her election to the council in 2021. She is the first Muslim, the first formerly undocumented immigrant, and the first African immigrant to serve on the panel. She arrived in Boston as a 10-year-old from Cape Verde, was formerly homeless, and faced deportation proceedings before she became a US citizen in 2019. Last year, she cruised to reelection over perennial candidate Althea Garrison, capturing more than 70 percent of the vote.

Fernandes Anderson, who makes $115,000 a year as a city councilor, has been frank about the racism and discrimination she said she has faced during her time on the council, and racial equity has been a throughline of her advocacy during her time in office.

“What the [expletive] do I have to do in this [expletive] council in order to get respect as a Black woman?” she said in the council chamber in 2022.

That year, she made headlines by proposing a temporary moratorium on all new development on publicly owned parcels in Roxbury, saying it would give the city a chance to consider redirecting affordable housing projects from Roxbury to other neighborhoods. Last year, she filed a resolution asking the council to hold a hearing to consider renaming Faneuil Hall, the popular tourist attraction and namesake for 18th-century slave trader Peter Faneuil. More recently, she pushed for a hearing to provide clarity on the work of the city’s reparations task force, saying, “A transparent process is the only way that decades of harm, centuries of harm, can begin to be repaired in the Black community.”

During her first term, she served as the ways and means chair, a powerful post integral to the city’s budgeting process. Now in her second term, she heads the council’s arts and civil rights committees.

City councilors have faced federal probes before. The late Chuck Turner, a celebrated activist and councilor who formerly held the District 7 seat, was convicted in 2010 of attempted extortion and three counts of providing false statements to FBI agents after authorities said he accepted $1,000 in cash in exchange for helping a nightclub win a liquor license. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison.

Niki Griswold of the Globe staff contributed to this report.