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(54,112 posts) Fri Sep 22, 2023, 12:56 PM Sep 2023

Gold Bars, Cash Stashes and a Benz: Bob Menendez Indicted for Bribery

A federal indictment charges the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman and his wife, Nadine.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sen-bob-menendez-indicted-on-bribery-charges-after-lengthy-probe

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has been charged with bribery in a federal indictment formally unsealed Friday at 11 a.m. The indictment accuses Menendez—the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—with accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using Menendez’s influence as a Senator to seek to... benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt.” The alleged payoffs came from three New Jersey businessmen and included cash, gold bars, payments toward a home mortgage, a no-show job, a Mercedes, and “other things of value,” according to the indictment.

The feds say they found more than $480,000 in cash stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe in Menendez’s New Jersey home, and more than $70,000 in his wife’s safe deposit box. Some of the envelopes contained DNA and fingerprints of one of the alleged co-conspirators, mob-connected real estate magnate Fred Daibes, and Daibes’ driver, the indictment alleges. One, the complaint claims, even bore Daibes's return address.

Investigators discovered other envelopes inside jackets hanging in one of Menendez’s closets, one of which bore the senator’s name and the logo of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In the same search of the Menendez home, agents also found home furnishings allegedly paid for by Daibes and Edgewater, New Jersey, businessman Wael Hana, the Mercedes, which prosecutors say was gifted to the politician by businessman Jose Uribe, and gold bars worth more than $100,000, according to the indictment.

In a Friday morning press conference in Lower Manhattan, Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, contrasted Menendez’s alleged efforts on behalf of his fellow defendants with the disclaimers the senator advertises on his official website. “It says he cannot compel an agency to act in someone’s favor. It says he cannot influence matters involving a private business. It says he cannot get involved in criminal matters, or cases, period,” Williams told reporters. “But we allege that behind the scenes, Sen. Menendez was doing those things for certain people: the people who were bribing him and his wife.”