The former all-powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position he left after being indicted, and also a Democratic Party heavyweight, is accused of 18 counts of alleged bribery, fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice and receiving payments to act as a foreign agent for the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
According to prosecutors, Menendez, 70, and his wife, Nadine Arslanian, received tens of thousands of dollars, gold bullion and a Mercedes convertible, among other benefits.
If found guilty by the jury, the Cuban-born New Jersey politician could spend 20 years in prison.
In closing arguments, which lasted all afternoon on Monday and ended on Tuesday, prosecutor Paul Monteleoni reminded the jury that in 2022 during the police raid on the Menendez home in New Jersey, “envelope after envelope of money” was found hidden among clothes, in closets and a safe. In total, $480,000.
Vast “corruption scheme”
In addition, another 70,000 dollars were found in a safe belonging to his wife, as well as 13 gold bars, four of them weighing 1 kg each. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, they were given to them by three businessmen who participated in the vast “corruption scheme” and who intended to enrich themselves under the protection of Menendez.
Two of these businessmen, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana, appear in the dock alongside the senator, while a third, José Uribe – who gave the Mercedes to Arslanian – agreed to cooperate with justice after pleading guilty.
Nadine Arslanian’s trial was postponed until July due to breast cancer.
According to prosecutors, Menendez interfered with the New Jersey courts and President Joe Biden in the appointment of the new district attorney for that state in order to try to have legal proceedings affecting Daibes and Uribe shelved.
He also transferred “sensitive U.S. government information” abroad and “took actions that secretly assisted the government of Egypt,” particularly in the military and intelligence fields, according to the indictment.
In exchange, he lobbied the US Department of Agriculture to ensure that Egyptian firm Wael Hana could retain the monopoly on importing halal meat (with animals slaughtered according to Muslim religious certification) that the Egyptian government had granted him.
Menendez is also said to have helped Daibes invest in a fund linked to Qatar. The senator is said to have introduced him to a member of the Qatari royal family who was also the director of an investment company in that Middle Eastern country, although this company was not identified.
In exchange, the businessmen paid for the services rendered with gold and money. But they also cancelled a mortgage of the senator’s wife and Wael Hana hired her as vice president of his company without her having to be present, paying her a salary of 120,000 dollars a year.
“The love of my life”
In one of hundreds of messages shown during the evaluation of communications between members of the plot, Nadine Arslanian, who identifies her phone as “mon fiancé parfait” (my perfect boyfriend, in French) wrote to her husband: “Looks like halal worked. May it be a fantastic 2019 in every way.”
The senator’s defense has tried to separate Menendez’s business from that of his wife, whom he married in 2020, two years after meeting her.
The bribes are believed to have started to circulate in February 2018, shortly after Menendez was acquitted of another corruption trial when the jury failed to reach unanimous vote. The prosecution eventually dropped another case.
The senator is also accused of obstructing justice by trying to return the money received from the businessmen as if it were a debt.
A senator since 2006 and previously a member of the House of Representatives (lower House) for 14 years, Menendez was an influential Democrat in Congress for three decades.
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was a fierce opponent of normalizing relations with Cuba, a staunch enemy of Venezuela and China, and a staunch defender of support for Israel.
The senator has declared himself innocent and claims that the case was a political plot against him.
Source: With information from AFP
