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NJ Sen. Bob Menendez hit with federal corruption charges for
second time; allegedly took bribes — including $150K in gold bars
By Kyle Schnitzer, Priscilla DeGregory and Ben Kochman
Published Sep. 22, 2023, 9:59 a.m. ET
NYPost
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has been hit with federal corruption charges related to a years-long scheme in which he allegedly accepted bribes — including more than $150,000 in gold bars — in exchange for helping the government of Egypt and protecting the interests of three wealthy businessmen.
The Democrat, 69 — and his wife, Nadine Menendez, 56 — were charged with taking hundreds of thousands in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and even exercise machines and an air purifier from 2018 through 2022, according to a Manhattan federal indictment unsealed Friday.
Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams, at a news conference announcing the charges, said Menendez used his “power and influence” – including his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – to benefit the Egyptian regime.
He also allegedly tried to meddle in the criminal prosecution of one of the businessmen by pushing President Biden to nominate Philip R. Sellinger as the US Attorney for New Jersey, because he believed Sellinger could influence the case, according to the indictment.
This is Menendez’ second time facing federal corruption charges. The prior criminal case against Menendez in New Jersey ended with a hung jury in 2017.
The bombshell new indictment alleges Menendez, a New Jersey senator since 2006, stuffed stacks of alleged ill-gotten cash in the pockets of official government jackets emblazoned with his name – and Googled “kilo of gold price.”
The feds raided Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs home in June 2022 and found “the fruits” of his “corrupt bribery agreement” — including the 2019 Mercedes C-Class, at least 13 gold bars and $486,461 in cash, the indictment states.
Piles of cash were found in envelopes in Menendez’s closet. US District Court
The money was “stuffed in envelopes” and “hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe,” including in the jackets, pictures of which were included in the court papers.
Another $70,000 in cash was found in Nadine’s safe deposit box, the indictment claims.
In exchange, Menendez used his office to help and shield three Garden State businessmen, co-defendants Wael Hana, 40, Jose Uribe, 56, and Fred Daibes, 66, the court papers claim.
Nadine Arslanian and Bob Menendez at the White House.
Getty Images
Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announces the indictment of
NJ Senator Robert Menendez and his wife on corruption charges.
Steven Hirsch
Through a “corrupt relationship” with the three men, Menendez and his wife “accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for Senator Menendez using his power and influence to protect and to enrich those businessmen and to benefit the government of Egypt,” Williams told reporters.
Menendez allegedly provided “substantial military aid to Egypt” including by:
Handing over sensitive information from the US government to Egyptian officials through a middleman, Hana, of Edgewater NJ., a longtime friend of Nadine’s who founded a halal food certification company.
Ghost writing a letter to other senators urging them to release a hold on $300 million in aid to Egypt.
Lobbying then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in April 2020 to increase US engagement in stalled negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Sudan over the building a dam on the Nile River, a key foreign policy issue for Egypt.
The senator also allegedly tried to interfere in criminal probes involving Uribe, a former insurance agent from Union City, NJ., and Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer and Menendez fundraiser.
Uribe, who runs a trucking and insurance business, and Hana allegedly agreed to buy Menendez and his wife the Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible, worth $60,000, in April 2019, the indictment claims.
On April 4, 2019, Uribe met with Nadine in a parking lot, handing her $15,000 in cash, which she used toward a down payment on the car. He also made monthly payments on the car from 2019 until June 2022.
Nadine sent a text to her politician husband with a photo of the Mercedes and the message: “Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes” with a heart emoji, the indictment alleges.
Stacks of cash were found in Menendez’s closet with his government outerwear.
US District Court
In exchange, Menendez allegedly tried to get a prosecutor in the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office to offer a favorable outcome in the case against one of Uribe’s associates and in another investigation against one of his employees, court papers say.
The prosecutor found the meetings with Menendez inappropriate and didn’t succumb to pressure, but Uribe’s associate still got a no-jail plea agreement and his employee was never charged, according to the indictment.
Similarly, Menendez allegedly sought to help Daibes – who court papers say bribed the couple with gold bars and cash for a series of favors – in a federal case he faced by recommending Sellinger for the post of New Jersey US Attorney.
Prosecutors allege Daibes in March 2022 gave Nadine two gold bars that were a kilogram each – when at the time gold went for $60,000 per kilogram. And Daibes’ driver’s fingerprints were later discovered on an envelope containing thousands of dollars in cash and recovered from the couple’s home, according to the indictment.
While Sellinger – who was not accused of wrongdoing and who is named only as “official 3” in the indictment – wound up recusing himself from the case, Daibes still received a no-jail plea deal in April 2022, the indictment notes.
Williams pointed out a message on Menendez’s official Senate website, which states, in part, that “he cannot compel an agency to act in someone’s favor … he cannot influence matters involving a private business. It says he cannot get involved in criminal matters, or cases, period.”
“But we allege behind the scenes, Senator Menendez was doing those things for certain people, the people who were bribing him and his wife,” Williams charged.
Menendez met Hana, an Egyptian immigrant, through Nadine — who had been friends with Hana for years prior to her starting to date Menendez in 2018.
The couple went out with Hana and dined on his dime on several occasions — so that prosecutors say the businessman and Nadine could convince Menendez to use his post on the Foreign Relations Committee to help get military aid to Egypt.
Egypt was at the time one of the top recipients of US aid — despite reservations from some politicians that the funds should be held until the country improved its human rights record.
In May 2018, Menendez, through his wife and Hana, provided an Egyptian official with “sensitive nonpublic” information about the number and nationality of people working in the US Embassy in Cairo, the feds allege.
That same month, he gave Hana non-public information about US military aid to Egypt, the indictment states.
Menendez and his wife would meet with five Egyptian officials in the US including one that Nadine referred to as “the general.” And the couple, who wed in 2020, took a trip to Egypt in October 2021, meeting with a slew of officials there too, the court papers allege.
After one meeting between Menendez and an Egyptian official, Hana on June 23, 2021, purchased 22 one-ounce gold bars — two of which were later found at the senator’s house, the indictment states.
Hana and his company IS EG Halal in 2019 were given a monopoly by Egypt as the sole company to certify foods as Halal, despite having no prior experience in the field.
The businessman then allegedly paid Nadine, a former marketer for a medical company, with three $10,000 checks for a no-show job at IS EG Halal. She used the money to help bring her mortgage payments up to date after foreclosure was initiated on her Bergen County property, the indictment states.
Williams noted that the investigation was “very much ongoing.”
Personally, I think Nadine is inordinately involved here. Could it be she is an Egyptian plant?
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U.S. government, 17 states sue Amazon for abusing monopoly power
Amazon.com accused by FTC of deceptive practices, favouritism and 'unlawful coercion'
Thomson Reuters · Posted: Sep 26, 2023 10:10 AM PDT |
The Amazon logo is photographed at the Vivatech trade show in Paris on June 15.
(Michel Euler/The Associated Press)
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com on Tuesday, charging the online retailer with harming consumers through higher prices in the latest U.S. government legal action aimed at breaking Big Tech's dominance of the internet.
The lawsuit, which was joined by 17 state attorneys general, follows a four-year investigation and federal lawsuits filed against Alphabet's Google and Meta Platforms' Facebook.
"The FTC and its state partners say Amazon's actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon," the agency said in a statement.
The FTC said that it was asking the court to issue a permanent injunction, ordering Amazon.com to stop its unlawful conduct.
Amazon said that the FTC lawsuit was wrong-headed and would hurt consumers by leading to higher prices and slower deliveries.
"The practices the FTC is challenging have helped to spur competition and innovation across the retail industry, and have produced greater selection, lower prices and faster delivery speeds for Amazon customers, and greater opportunity for the many businesses that sell in Amazon's store," said David Zapolsky, Amazon's general counsel.
The federal complaint follows other actions the FTC has taken against Amazon recently. In June, the agency sued the company, alleging it was using deceptive practices to enrol consumers into Amazon Prime and making it challenging for them to cancel their subscriptions.
In late May, the company agreed to pay a $25-million US civil penalty to settle allegations that it violated a child privacy law and misled parents about data deletion practices on its popular voice assistant Alexa.
Booksellers and authors have also been urging the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate what they've called Amazon's "monopoly power over the market for books and ideas."
Unnecessary fees, pressure to use
The FTC said that Amazon, founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and worth more than $1 trillion US, punished sellers that sought to offer prices that were lower than Amazon's by making it difficult for consumers to find the seller on Amazon's platform.
Other allegations include:
Amazon gave preference to its own products in search results over competitors.
Charging costly monthly and advertising fees to sellers it says have no choice but to rely on Amazon.
Engaging in "unlawful coercion" to pressure sellers to join Amazon's Prime fulfilment service.
FTC chair Lina Khan said that Amazon had used illegal tactics to fend off companies that would have risen to challenge its monopoly.
"Amazon is now exploiting that monopoly power to harm its customers, both the tens of millions of families that shop on Amazon's platform and the hundreds of thousands of sellers that use Amazon to reach them," she said.
Khan, while a law student, wrote about Amazon.com's dominance in online retailing for The Yale Law Journal and was on the staff of the House committee that wrote a report issued in 2020 that advocated reining in four tech giants: Amazon.com, Apple, Google and Facebook.
Many analysts had wondered whether the agency would seek a forced breakup of the retail giant, which is also dominant in cloud computing through Amazon Web Services and has a growing presence in other sectors, like groceries and health care. In a briefing with reporters, Khan dodged questions of whether that will happen.
"At this stage, the focus is more on liability," she said.
Some estimates show Amazon controls about 40 per cent of the e-commerce market. A majority of the sales on its platform are facilitated by independent sellers consisting of small- and medium-sized businesses and individuals. In return for the access it provides to its platform, Amazon rakes in billions through referral fees and other services like advertising, which makes products sold by sellers more visible on the platform.
The vast majority of third-party merchants also use the company's fulfilment service to store inventory and ship items to customers. Amazon has been consistently raising fees for those reliant on the program and more recently imposed, and then abandoned, another fee on some who don't — a move that was blasted by the company's critics.
Amazon critic welcomes suit
Last quarter, Amazon reported $32.3 billion US in revenue from third-party services. According to the anti-monopoly organization Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), the fees cost U.S. sellers 45 per cent of their revenue in the first half of this year — up from 35 per cent in 2020 and 19 per cent in 2014.
The ILSR, long critical of Amazon's power, welcomed the agency's lawsuit.
"No corporation has ever centralized this much power across so many crucial sectors. Left unchecked, Amazon's power to dictate and control threatens the rule of law and our ability to maintain open, democratically governed markets," said Stacy Mitchell, the group's co-executive director.
The need to take action against Big Tech has been one of the few ideas that Democrats and Republicans have agreed on. During the Trump administration, which ended in 2021, the Justice Department and FTC opened probes into Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.
But in terms of the current lawsuit, the large majority of states joining were solid Democratic jurisdictions, with no states in the south.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Seattle, where Amazon is based.
With files from CBC News and The Associated Press
