ADDS DETAILS THROUGHOUT
By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON (AA) - US Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife were indicted Friday on bribery charges following a federal investigation into their relationships with a trio of New Jersey businessmen.
Menendez is accused of participating in a number of corrupt acts that benefited himself, his wife, foreign governments and businessmen.
Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said that from 2018 to 2022, Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian "engaged in a corrupt relationship" with New Jersey real estate tycoon Fred Daibes, halal meat certification businessman Wael Hana, and New Jersey businessman Jose Uribe.
That included accepting bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for "corrupt" favors.
"The senator agreed to do these things and use his power in this way because Hana was paying bribes, because Uribe was paying bribes, and because Davies was paying bribes," Williams said.
The gifts included a Mercedes-Benz C-Class C300 luxury car, gold bars worth roughly $150,000, and other payments, according to prosecutors.
Investigators found over $486,000 in cash when they conducted a search of the Menendez's home and safety deposit box in June 2022, "much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe," according to the indictment unsealed Friday.
Some of those envelopes included Daibes' fingerprints of DNA, or those of his driver, according to prosecutors.
A federal grand jury has returned a three-count indictment charging Menendez, his wife, Daibes, Uribe and Hana with conspiracy to commit bribery, and conspiracy to commit honest services fraud. The senator and his wife are additionally charged with extortion.
Williams insisted that the investigation, which has included the FBI and Internal Revenue Service, "is very much ongoing."
"We are not done. And I want to encourage anyone with information to come forward and to come forward quickly," he said.
Menendez has previously denied wrongdoing. The indictment is the second since the senior senator from New Jersey assumed office. A previous trial on accepting extravagant gifts from a Florida doctor ended in a hung jury in 2017, and prosecutors opted not to retry him.
Menendez wields the powerful chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the indictment says he "promised to and did use his influence and power and breach his official duty in ways that benefited" the Egyptian government, pointing to his provision of "sensitive U.S. Government information" to Cairo.
He further allegedly pressured an individual with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) "for the purpose of protecting a business monopoly granted to Hana by Egypt."
Hana is the owner of IS EG Halal, a startup company that won a lucrative contract with the Egyptian government to conduct all halal inspections for US exports to Egypt despite not having any experience in the field.
Hana allegedly arranged a series of meetings between Menendez and Egyptian officials "for corrupt purposes," including putting Menendez's wife on Hana's company's payroll "for a low-or-no-show job," in exchange for the senator's promise to facilitate arms sales and financing to Cairo, the indictment alleges.
Just after meeting Hana on May 6, 2018, Menendez sought non-public information from the State Department about the number and nationalities of individuals serving at the US embassy in Cairo, and then texted that information to his wife who sent it to Hana, the indictment says.
The businessman then allegedly turned it over to an Egyptian government official.
The indictment alleges that after Hana's IS EG Halal won the halal monopoly from Egypt in 2019, Hana formed a limited liability corporation to run "bribe payments" to Arslanian using the proceeds from the contract with Cairo. Menendez then allegedly used his position to pressure a USDA official to drop the agency's opposition to IS EG Halal's monopoly.
Bribes to Arsalian included a $23,000 payment to a mortgage company that was made in July 2019 after foreclosure proceedings began on her residence.
Prosecutors alleged two separate schemes, including one in which Menendez allegedly agreed to interfere in a New Jersey state criminal investigation into one of Uribe's employees and one of his associates in exchange for the Mercedes-Benz.
Another plot allegedly included Menendez seeking to disrupt a federal investigation into Daibes in exchange for gifts that included cash, furniture and gold bars. That included pressuring US President Joe Biden to nominate a US attorney for New Jersey that Menendez believed would be sympathetic to Daibes' case.
The individual, who was confirmed by the Senate, recused himself from the case, however, and prosecutors said that neither he nor his replacement interfered with the case as a result of Menendez's actions.
Daibes ultimately struck a plea deal with prosecutors, but his sentencing has been repeatedly delayed over the past year.