Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York announced on Friday, September 22, that they had obtained an indictment against Democratic New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez with bribery charges.
US Attorney Damien Williams said during a press conference: "Today, I'm announcing that my office has obtained a three-count indictment charging Senator Robert Menendez, his wife Nadine Menendez, and three New Jersey businessmen - Wael Hana, Jose Uribe, and Fred Daibes - for bribery offenses."
According to the unsealed indictment in CNN's report, Menendez and his wife had a "corrupt relationship" with Hana, Uribe, and Daibes from at least 2018 through 2022.
Accused of Accepting Bribes
Fox News reported that the couple is suspected of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in return for leveraging Menendez's position as a senator to further the interests of Hana, Uribe, and Daibes and those of the Arab Republic of Egypt.
Alleged bribes included money, gold, mortgage payments, money for low- or no-show work, a luxurious car, and other valuables. Menendez said that in the year 2020, his family had been given gold bars as a gift.
Williams said special agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) searched Menendez's home and safe deposit box as part of their inquiry.
Cash totaling about $500,000 was discovered by the agents in envelopes stashed in various closets and even in the senator's jacket pockets. The fingerprints and DNA on several of the bills and envelopes matched those of Daibes.
Three kilos of gold and a Mercedes-Benz, both gifts from Uribe to the senator, were discovered by authorities.
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The Three Businessmen Involved
According to the prosecution, Menendez, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gave Egyptian-American businessman Hana access to classified material from the US government.
The accusation indicates that Menendez used undue influence over a Department of Agriculture official in order to safeguard a commercial monopoly awarded to Hana by the Egyptian government. Then, reportedly, Hana gave Menendez a cut of his monopoly's revenues.
Meanwhile, the inquiry against Uribe and his friends by New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin is also allegedly hampered by the senator's use of his official position.
According to the indictment, Menendez also tried to persuade President Joe Biden to choose a US Attorney for the District of New Jersey who would not pursue charges against Menendez's friend Daibes.
US Attorney Nominee Phillip Sellinger gets Menendez's backing. A former fundraiser for Menendez's campaign, Sellinger is no stranger to the process. A US Attorney's Office representative informed NBC News, however, that Sellinger had excluded himself from the Daibes case.
Daibes, while serving as chairman of Mariner's Bank, was accused of bank fraud, which carried a maximum sentence of ten years in jail, over a roughly $2 million loan. But, the US Attorney's Office in New Jersey last year accepted Daibes' plea of guilty to a single count in exchange for probation. They stated that Daibes paid back the money he borrowed.
