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Robert Menendez, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, and his wife Nadine accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for exerting influence over aid to Egypt and helping a halal exports business, prosecutors in Manhattan alleged in an indictment unsealed on Friday.
The couple and three New Jersey businessmen were charged in a scheme involving the alleged gifting of cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Menendez, who chairs the Senate foreign relations committee, “promised to and did use his influence and power and breach his official duty in ways that benefited the Government of Egypt and . . . an Egyptian-American businessman, among others”, prosecutors said in the indictment.
The indictment marks the second time the influential senator has been forced to defend corruption charges, after being accused in 2015 of accepting almost $1mn in bribes from an ophthalmologist in exchange for intervening in Medicare billing disputes and supporting the visa applications of his co-defendant’s girlfriends.
A jury deadlocked and was unable to reach a verdict in that case, and the charges were later dropped in 2018.
In the indictment unsealed on Friday, prosecutors said Menendez had “provided sensitive US government information” useful to the Egyptian government, and “improperly advised and pressured an official at the . . . Department of Agriculture for the purpose of protecting a business monopoly granted to (a co-defendant) by Egypt” involving the certification of halal food exports.
Menendez was also alleged to have personally drafted a letter in 2018 that was later sent by an Egyptian lobbyist to senators, imploring them to remove a hold on $300mn worth of military aid to the Arab state.
Prosecutors further said the New Jersey senator “promised to and did use his influence and power and breach his official duty to seek to disrupt a criminal investigation and prosecution” undertaken into one of the co-defendants by the state’s attorney-general, Philip Sellinger.
The proceeds of some of the alleged bribes were found during a raid on Menendez’s home and safe deposit box last summer, in which more than $480,000 in cash — “much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe”, according to the indictment — was discovered, along with more than $70,000 in a box belonging to Menendez’s wife.
Two one-ounce gold bars, whose serial numbers matched those bought by one of the co-defendants a year earlier, were also found in the search, the indictment said.
Menendez, 69, is a former mayor of New Jersey’s Union City, who has been on Capitol Hill for decades, serving six terms in the House of Representatives before being appointed to the Senate in 2006.
He replaced Jon Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs executive who had stepped down from his Senate seat after being elected governor of New Jersey. Menendez was re-elected in 2012 and 2018, and is expected to stand for re-election again next year.
Menendez’s Senate office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As chair of the powerful Senate foreign relations committee — a role once held by Joe Biden while he was in the Senate — Menendez plays a central role in crafting foreign policy legislation and confirming senior state department officials. Menendez first chaired the committee from 2013 to 2015, but stepped down from his role as the most senior Democrat on the panel after his first indictment. He rejoined in 2018, after the charges were dropped.
