The charges of corruption and fraud facing Senator Bob Menendez from the District Attorney’s Office of Southern New York are heavy, as they were made public yesterday (see the relevant document Menendez-Indictment) and they concern not only the “services” of businessmen in his state, but mainly relations with foreign government – of Egypt. We remind here that Egypt is one of the most favored countries in the world by the US, which considers it a “strategic ally” in the Middle East and offers it around 1 billion dollars a year for defense aid.
But this funding (FMF) as well as the various sales of military material (FMS), were sometimes blocked by groups of American politicians protesting e.g. on human rights issues in Egypt. So Menendez is accused of taking payments through intermediaries to facilitate these transfers and push for something that was within his power as chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. In essence, Menendez is recorded as “selling his influence for the benefit of the Egyptians”, a serious accusation that goes beyond the usual “internal type” political corruption.
According to the indictment, the wife of Nadine Arslanian (of Armenian origin) played a central role in this case. She had known Menendez since 2018, they got engaged in 2019 and married at the end of 2020. Also featured here is Wael Hana, an American-Egyptian businessman based in New Jersey (the state where Menendez is elected), who had an old friendship with Nadine, who also introduced him to her husband.
As the indictment describes this “triangular” scheme worked as follows: Hana was in contact with Egyptian officials from the Armed Forces and intelligence services (the indictment shows photographs of some with covered faces, does not name them, but from the wording it is obvious that their identities are known), whom he arranged through Nadine to meet Menendez.
The indictment describes numerous meetings both in Menendez’s Senate office and elsewhere, with the senator providing various “services” to the Egyptians. For example, in May 2018 (when Menendez and Nadine still met) Menendez is accused of meeting with an Egyptian referred to as “The General”, and writing a letter to other senators to release a defense aid package to Egypt worth 300 million dollars. The letter was written by Menendez but sent from the Egyptian side, so it is implied here that the senator helped word the text in such a way that it would be persuasive to American politicians. Let us comment here that this is a small service, but since it happened, maybe it was a “beginning” of the contacts that followed.
Another episode described is in July 2018 (a little later that is), where again Menendez meets with many Egyptian officials, they provide him with information about their government’s positions on American aid, etc. Still according to the indictment, the day after the meeting, Menendez sends a cell phone message to Nadine, writing: “Tell Hana that I will approve this sale to Egypt today. 46,000 120mm practice rounds and 10,000 tank rounds, (worth) $99 million.” (Our note, these are missiles for Egypt’s M1 Abrams tanks).
What else does the indictment describe?
How to reward the couple Bob and Nadine Menendez for their “services” to Egypt, Hana (the main “lever” from the Egyptian side) used a company he owned, IS EG Halal. The company provided “consultant” fees to Nadine without her providing any work, in essence they were paying her for what Menendez did. But, since the company had only minimal income, payments were delayed, Nadine protested and told Menendez as well (as written in the indictment, piles of cell phone messages from all the involved persons have been found, which reveal the relationships between them).
At some point, however, we have the “Egyptian intervention”, which offers IS EG Halal the following great facility. To have the monopoly of approving the export of food from the United States to Egypt. The approval was about whether the food was “Halal”, meaning according to the Muslim religion. So Hana and his company found themselves controlling the food export trade from the US to Egypt, showed large revenues and began making payments to the Nadine-Bob Menendez couple.
The interesting thing (we remind you for the umpteenth time that we mention what the indictment says): How when other American businessmen, as well as the US Department of Agriculture, protested this monopolistic exploitation of IS EG Halal, Menendez himself intervened asking “to leave it alone ». So here the senator appears defending a company (a mechanism more correctly) that paid and legalized the bribes from Egypt.
Not to bore our readers: The indictment mentions several meetings between Menendez and Egyptian officials in 2019, 2020 to 2022 with exchanges of messages, payments, favors. E.g. in January 2022 the senator sent a message to Nadine’s wife regarding two sales of US defense equipment to Egypt worth $2.5 billion (apparently these are the approval of the sale of 12 C-130J transports to Egypt and radar that was made at the time) . Nadine forwarded her husband’s message to Hana, writing “Bob approved this.”
What is the Menendez couple reportedly taking? Many and various. A $23,000 installment was paid by Hana’s company on a mortgage on Nadine’s property. She was also given various portfolios or “consultant” fees in the order of $10,000 at a time. Hana’s company even bought thousands of dollars worth of gym equipment and other items which (incredibly naive if it happened), ordered online but delivered to the Menendez home!
In June 2021, two days after another meeting between Menendez and an Egyptian, Hana bought 22 one-ounce gold bars (worth about $40,000 in total at the time). Two of them were later found at Menendez’s home during the police investigation, and identification was made because each rod had a unique serial number engraved on it. In total, Menendez and his wife are accused of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, checks, gold, and gifts from their contacts with the Egyptian side.
And the “friends” in the foreground
The indictment does not stop here and describes yet another extension of corruption. Hana had a friend and business partner, Jose Uribe, who in 2019 bought a Mercedes C-300 convertible ($60,000) for the Menendez couple. In return the senator intervened in the New Jersey Attorney General’s investigation and prosecution of Uribe’s business and associates. The indictment states that Uribe gave Nadine Menendez $15,000 in cash as a down payment for the car, she bought it and took out a loan for the rest of the amount. However, Uribe paid the installments of the loan from his own companies! When Nadine got the car she texted her husband writing
“Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes.”
The interesting thing here is that when the Menendez investigation began in 2022, Uribe stopped the payments and the Menendez’s returned $21,000 by check, saying they were paying off a “personal loan” (so here the indictment implies that they tried to to cover the benefit they had received).
Another person appears to bribe Menendez. This is Fred Daibes, who was being prosecuted for fraud by the New Jersey Attorney General. So he approached Menendez, so that the latter would promote a candidate for the new Attorney General (in the USA these positions are elective), who had promised Daibes that if elected he would not continue the prosecution against him. In fact, even more complex scenes are described here, where Menendez had met with a candidate for the position of Attorney General and in the conversation they had, the senator told him about the prosecution of Daibes. The candidate did not agree, so Menendez announced to him that he would promote someone else for the position, even recommending him to the White House.
When Menendez’s home was searched, several files containing thousands of dollars were found, which had Daibes’ fingerprints or DNA. Also after a meal the couple had with Daibes, in March 2022, the next day Nadine Menendez met with a jeweler and gave him 2 gold bars, one kilogram each (worth a total of about $120,000) to sell. Here it is recorded that Menendez himself had searched the internet for the question “how much is a kilo of gold”… Nadine lied to the jeweler that the bars were from her mother, but here again the serial numbers on the bars revealed, after prosecutorial investigation, that they belonged to Daibes. The latter has already pleaded guilty and has made an agreement with the prosecution for a reduced sentence.
A dark picture
Reading the indictment, which Menendez categorically denied, we can comment on the following:
1. At first glance, it seems that there is a large investigation, which has collected a lot of information, phone calls, cell phone messages, photos, transactions, findings from the Menendez couple’s house, confessions of third parties, and more over the course of four years. In other words, it is not a case that can be assumed to have been “set up quickly”.
2. Although the payments to the Menendez couple are recorded as small in each case, the total of what has been found exceeds 1 million dollars (eg about 480,000 cash inside his house) and – if these accusations are true – could be significant. bigger ones.
3. Also revealed is the pivotal role of Menendez’s wife, who is described from the beginning of their acquaintance, acting as an intermediary in contacts with her own circle, who wanted to approach the senator. But at the same time, one cannot fully blame her, since Menendez is an old and experienced politician, so – if he did all this – he knew very well that it was illegal and how high risk it was. Having even been accused in the past (without the trial ending) for similar cases.
4. The fourth issue is the crucial role of Menendez, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, which offered him a position of power, but also a stepping stone to reach high circles in Washington, where he could influence the flow of defense funding to other countries. In other words, a position he is jealous of, which he is accused of taking advantage of to serve the Sisi regime in Egypt, at a time when other US deputies and senators denounced his brutal persecution of his opponents and that there are thousands of political prisoners in the country.
Obviously, all of the above remains to be proven in a trial, if of course this case reaches the court. Because there is always the case – common in the American judicial and political tradition – to make an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office, accepting part or all of the indictment, paying fines and some moderate sentences. Or, of course, that Menendez and all the others be fully acquitted. The issue is that the gravity of the accusations is very great, it extends to international relations of the USA, but also to interference in the judiciary within a country, i.e. issues where there is significant sensitivity for the American public and its institutions (with any hypocrisy of course) .
The only sure thing for now is that Menendez is being “deactivated” politically. He has already left the chairmanship of the Committee, there are strong pressures for him to resign as a senator, while the scandal that has broken out will significantly cost the Democrats, who are going for elections next year (and he himself, if he remains a senator, will have to seek re-election ). As Menendez was one of their highly respected figures, in the Capitol and in general in the political scene of the country, but also internationally. And exactly there, Greece had supported a lot with his fervent identification with our own interests, as well as the systematic public condemnation he exercised against Ankara.
