NEW YORK — While still serving as New York Mayor Eric Adams’ chief of staff last year, Frank Carone held stakes worth at least $1.5 million in three different companies, according to a new financial disclosure form that appears to be at odds with public statements about his holdings.

The form, which was released by the city Conflicts of Interest Board to the New York Daily News on Friday, is supposed to provide details on all assets held by Carone between Jan. 1, 2022, and Dec. 26, 2022, the date he resigned as Adams’ chief of staff.

In the form, Carone reported he held at least a $500,000 stake in CHC Holdings, a company with a similar name to a Brooklyn surgical center he used to co-own and that has faced legal issues. Carone reported holding at least another $500,000 in Financial Capital Group, a business involved in medical insurance lending, and yet another $500,000 in AF Premier Group, an investment firm.

Those holdings appear to contradict an Adams spokesman’s claim in early 2022 that Carone was divested from “all of his business” interests while at City Hall.

But when contacted by the Daily News on Friday, Carone said he didn’t actually hold any of those stakes in 2022.

Even though the form specifies at several junctures that the period that should be covered is “Jan. 1, 2022 through the last date of your city service,” Carone said he filled out the disclosure in March 2023 with his current investments in mind.

“I wanted to file it accurately and for it not to be false,” said Carone, who is a lawyer by trade and has taken on the job of running Adams’ 2025 reelection campaign since exiting City Hall. “I didn’t want to file a false instrument.”

Carone said that if he erred in the filing, he would amend it. Last year, Carone amended his first Conflicts of Interest Board form after the Daily News discovered that he had failed to disclose that he had in 2021, prior to becoming chief of staff, done legal work for a scandal-scarred homeless shelter provider with business before the city.

The issue of whether Carone’s many business interests would pose a conflict reared its head days after Adams’ Jan. 1, 2022, inauguration, when the Daily News reported on a rent dispute between the Brooklyn-based CHC Surgical Center, which Carone used to co-own, and that company’s landlord. At the time, Max Young, a spokesman for Adams, said Carone’s divestment “from all of his business” — including CHC — had been completed and that most of his assets had been placed in a blind trust.

On Friday, Young stood by his statement from January 2022.

“What I said at the time was true,” he said. “Frank divested from all his businesses, including CHC, while he was in government.”

When asked about any connections between CHC Surgical and CHC Holdings on Friday, Carone said in a text that they are “different entities” with “different partners” — “same type of industry hence the name.”

The blind trust in which Carone kept all his assets in during his time as chief of staff was dissolved upon his departure from City Hall, he said. He said that’s why he reported the stake in the three companies on his latest Conflicts of Interest Board disclosure — because those assets were back in his personal portfolio by the time he filled out the form.

Financial Capital Group, one of the other entities Carone listed on his asset list in the 2022 form, has a similar name to Financial Vision Group, a company he co-founded that advances money to medical providers as they are waiting on insurance payouts.

Financial Vision Group has faced a number of legal issues, including being sued last year by SL Green, a major commercial real estate firm, for nearly $1 million in unpaid rent on a Manhattan office space. When the Daily News reported on that rent debt in February, Carone said he no longer had anything “to do with this litigation or entity.”

Asked Friday what the difference is between Financial Vision Group and Financial Capital Group, a spokesman for Carone said “they do similar things” but “are not the same entity, actually.”

In addition to his company assets, Carone reported in his disclosure that he received upward of $250,000 in “deferred income” in 2022 from old legal cases involving clients he represented as an attorney. He said the cases “originated prior to my dates of services” in City Hall but “matured (without my involvement) and which came to me during that period.”

Since exiting Adams’ administration, Carone has launched Oaktree Solutions, a global consulting firm. The Carone firm has picked up at least one client with business before Adams’ administration — Lightstone Group, a major real estate developer that’s facing legal issues over the construction of its Moxy Hotel in Brooklyn.

After Carone got involved with representing Lightstone, the hotel last month secured a new temporary certificate of occupancy from Adams’ Department of Buildings, even though a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge had weeks earlier ruled the Moxy’s zoning invalid. Carone said earlier this week that he has not spoken with anyone in Adams’ administration about the Moxy matter.

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