Sen. Bob Menendez, and his wife have been charged with bribery over their alleged acceptance of “hundreds of thousands of dollars”.
What are the charges?
The charges include conspiracy to commit bribes, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, and conspiracy to commit extortion under colour of official right. The indictment charges Menendez, 69, and his wife with having a corrupt relationship with three New Jersey businessmen — Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daides.
“Those bribes included cash, gold, mortgage payments, compensation for a no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and other expensive items,” according to the indictment.
Many of the things that were discovered by federal officials when they executed search warrants in the residence of the couple in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in June 2022. As per the indictment, they uncovered more than $480,000 in cash, “much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe,” including clothes bearing the senator’s name that were hanging in his wardrobe, as well as more than $70,000 in Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box.
Agents also allegedly found a Mercedes-Benz convertible of value more than $60,000 that New Jersey businessmen Wael Hana and Jose Uribe allegedly gave to Menendez’s wife in exchange for the senator intervening with a state prosecution of Uribe’s associate and an investigation into an employee whom Uribe referred to as a relative. Federal officials additionally found gold bars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars donated by Hana and another businessman, Fred Daibes, in the senator’s home. The indictment contained additional charges against all three businessmen.
According to the indictment, Menendez reportedly supplied confidential US government information “that secretly aided the Government of Egypt” and “improperly advised and pressured” a US agricultural official to keep an exclusive deal for Hana to be the sole seller of halal meat to Egypt.
Menendez also tried to disrupt a criminal investigation into a second businessman in the trucking industry that had been undertaken by the New Jersey attorney general, the indictment said.
Who is Robert Mendez
Robert Menendez ; born on January 1, 1954 is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from New Jersey, a seat he has held since 2006.A member of the Democratic Party, he was first appointed to the U.S. Senate by Governor Jon Corzine, and chaired the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 2013 to 2015, and again from 2021 to 2023.
Personal life
Menendez married Jane Jacobsen, a Union City Board of Education and Union City Public Schools teacher, in 1976. They had two children: Alicia Menendez, an MSNBC television commentator/host and Rob Menendez, who worked as the Commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey before being elected to Congress as a Democrat in New Jersey’s 8th congressional district in 2022. In 2005, Menendez and his wife parted ways.
Menendez married Nadine Arslanian, a businesswoman from Bergen County, in October 2019.They got married in October 2020.She divorced in 2005 after having two children from a previous marriage.
