Bribery and Kickbacks

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      Senator Menendez ‘Sold the Power of His Office,’ Prosecutor Says

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      In a closing statement, a prosecutor said the Menendez home was awash in cash and walked jurors through what the government has called a complicated web of corruption.When F.B.I. agents raided the New Jersey home of Senator Robert Menendez and his wife, they found envelope after envelope of cash, a federal prosecutor told a jury on Monday. Cash stuffed in bags, cash stuffed in the pockets of the senator’s jackets, cash stuffed in his boots. Gold bars worth thousands of dollars.The valuables were bribes that two businessmen paid to the couple in exchange for promises of official action by Mr. Menendez, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the prosecutor, Paul M. Monteleoni, said.“It wasn’t enough for him to be one of the most powerful people in Washington,” Mr. Monteleoni told jurors. “It wasn’t enough for him to be entrusted by the public with the power to approve billions of dollars of U.S. military aid to foreign countries.”“No, Robert Menendez wanted all that power,” he added. “But he also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife.”“So, Menendez sold the power of his office,” he said.The prosecutor’s closing statement came as the trial of Mr. Menendez, 70, and the two businessmen — Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — entered its ninth week in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Prosecutors say Mr. Hana and Mr. Daibes were enriched in the scheme and helped to funnel bribes to the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, 57.In exchange, the indictment says, Mr. Menendez steered aid and weapons to Egypt, used his political clout to help the government of Qatar, propped up Mr. Hana’s lucrative halal certification business monopoly and sought to disrupt several criminal investigations in New Jersey on behalf of Mr. Daibes, a real estate developer, and another ally, Jose Uribe, a former insurance broker.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Menendez Defense Rests Without Senator Testifying

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      Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey is accused of a wide-ranging international bribery conspiracy. Jurors are likely to begin deliberating next week.After calling just four witnesses, lawyers for Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey rested their case late Wednesday afternoon in Manhattan federal court, setting the stage for jurors to begin deliberations in his international bribery conspiracy trial early next week.Mr. Menendez, 70, said that he decided against testifying in his own defense for two primary reasons.The government, he said, had not proved its case, and he did not want to give prosecutors an opportunity to rehash the charges twice — once on cross-examination and again in closing arguments.That was “simply not something that makes any sense to me whatsoever,” Mr. Menendez said as he left the courthouse after proceedings ended for the day.“I expect my lawyers will produce a powerful and convincing summation, deduce how the evidence came out, where they failed across the board, and have the jury render a verdict of not guilty,” he added.Final summations in the case — first by prosecutors, then by lawyers for Mr. Menendez and two co-defendants, followed by a government rebuttal — are likely to begin as early as Monday afternoon, according to the judge, Sidney H. Stein of Federal District Court.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Charged With Smuggling Contraband Into Brooklyn Juvenile Detention Center

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      Court papers said the “youth development specialists” took more than $50,000 in bribes to allow in items like razor blades, marijuana, alcohol and prescription pills.Five current and former employees at a city-run juvenile detention center in Brooklyn were arrested by federal officials on Wednesday on charges that they had accepted bribes to smuggle in a tidal wave of illicit substances, razor blades and scalpels.All five were “youth development specialists” employed by the Administration for Children’s Services at Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brownsville, and were released on bail after an initial appearance before a judge in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday afternoon.The employees were Da’Vante Bolton, 31, of Queens; Roger Francis, 58, of Brooklyn; Christopher Craig, 37, of Brooklyn; and Nigel King, 45, of Queens. One former employee, Octavia Napier, 26, of Brooklyn, had already been fired after it appeared that she had been involved in smuggling, according to a criminal complaint.None entered pleas at their court appearance on Wednesday. Mr. Francis declined to comment after the hearing, as did lawyers for Mr. Bolton, Mr. Craig and Mr. King. A lawyer for Ms. Napier did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The defendants “violated their duty to the city and the residents at Crossroads” and placed the center’s residents and staff members “at an alarming risk of serious harm,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.The facility, in Brownsville, houses about 120 young people ages 14 to 20. Prosecutors said that the authorities had found more than 340 scalpels or blades in the possession of residents in the past two years. They also found at least 75 banned cellphones, pills, alcohol and cigarettes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Is There Any Chance He Can Sit on a Camel?’ A Senator’s Wife Wanted to Know.

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      An aide to Senator Robert Menendez testified that she had been asked to consult with an Egyptian intelligence officer who had befriended Nadine Menendez.In March 2019, an aide to Senator Robert Menendez drafted a letter that used strong language to criticize the president of Egypt and the country’s human rights record. Mr. Menendez declined to sign it.Mr. Menendez, then the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he wanted to try a less confrontational approach, the aide, Sarah Arkin, testified on Monday at the senator’s bribery trial.“We’ve been going after them for so long on human rights — have been really out there publicly criticizing them — and it hasn’t really changed anything on the ground,” Ms. Arkin, a senior staff member with the committee, said Mr. Menendez had told her.Instead, Mr. Menendez said he wanted “to be a little less publicly critical and do more private and quiet engagement,” Ms. Arkin said.Ms. Arkin’s testimony came at the start of the seventh week of the senator’s trial in Manhattan federal court. Mr. Menendez, 70, is charged with steering aid and weapons to Egypt in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes as part of a wide-ranging and yearslong conspiracy.He has strenuously maintained his innocence, and as Mr. Menendez was leaving court on Monday he defended his record related to Egypt and its president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. “No one has been a harsher critic of Egypt,” Mr. Menendez said. “No one has been more persistent a critic of President el-Sisi on the question of human rights, democracy, rule of law.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jose Uribe Expected to Testify in Menendez Trial

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      Jose Uribe is cooperating with the government. Prosecutors say he sought Senator Robert Menendez’s help to stave off fraud investigations into two allies.Until recently, Jose Uribe was an obscure New Jersey businessman who had been caught up in what prosecutors say was a sprawling and lucrative bribery scheme involving Senator Robert Menendez and others.But after Mr. Uribe pleaded guilty in March to trying to bribe Mr. Menendez and agreed to cooperate with the authorities, he vaulted into a more prominent position: star government witness.On Friday, Mr. Uribe is expected to testify against Mr. Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, prosecutors said, as the senator’s corruption trial ends its fourth week.The senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, are charged with conspiring to accept cash, gold bullion and other bribes collectively worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for Mr. Menendez’s agreement to direct aid to Egypt and to meddle in criminal cases in New Jersey. One of those cases involved Mr. Uribe.Who Are Key Players in the Menendez Case?Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, are accused of taking part in a wide-ranging, international bribery scheme that lasted five years. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.Prosecutors say Mr. Uribe, a former insurance broker who worked in the trucking industry, sought the senator’s help to stave off criminal investigations the New Jersey attorney general’s office was conducting into two of Mr. Uribe’s associates. In return, an indictment says, Mr. Uribe helped to buy Ms. Menendez, then the senator’s girlfriend, a new Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible worth more than $60,000.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutors Use Menendez Couple’s Texts to Depict Them as Collaborators

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      Senator Robert Menendez is accused of bribery and corruption. His lawyers have attempted to shift the blame to his wife, Nadine.In January 2019, Senator Robert Menendez placed a seven-minute call to New Jersey’s attorney general, Gurbir Grewal, in what prosecutors say was an effort to quash an insurance fraud case.A New Jersey businessman, Jose Uribe, had been desperate to make the fraud charges disappear, prosecutors say. He had turned to Nadine Menendez — who married the senator the next year — for help.In the hours and days before the senator’s call, there was a flurry of communication between Ms. Menendez, Mr. Uribe and a second businessman who is charged with the senator and his wife in an elaborate bribery scheme. Ms. Menendez would often contact the senator soon after texting with the men, sometimes using an alternate phone that the couple referred to as her “007” phone.The messages were shared Wednesday with jurors over hours of testimony from an F.B.I. special agent during the fourth week of Mr. Menendez’s bribery trial. The agent was responsible for verifying the accuracy of a chart summarizing more than 1,100 pieces of evidence, including emails, texts and voice mail recordings.Taken together, the messages appeared to be part of the prosecution’s effort to undercut a central element of Mr. Menendez’s defense: that he and his wife lived largely separate lives, and that he was unaware of her interactions with the men now accused of bribing the couple in exchange for political favors from the senator.Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York took pains on Wednesday to instead present the senator and his wife as close collaborators who spoke regularly and were intimately involved in mundane details of each other’s daily lives.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge in Robert Menendez Bribery Case Bars Some Prosecution Evidence

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      The ruling could undermine prosecutors’ ability to prove certain elements of the bribery case against Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat.In a potential setback for the government, a federal judge on Friday blocked the introduction of certain evidence that prosecutors wanted to use to support their case that Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey accepted bribes in exchange for approving billions of dollars in aid to Egypt.The judge’s order, which comes two weeks into Mr. Menendez’s corruption trial in Manhattan, could undermine prosecutors’ ability to prove certain elements of the multifaceted bribery charges against the senator.The ruling rests on protections afforded to members of Congress under the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which bars the government from citing specific legislative actions in seeking to prove a federal lawmaker committed a crime.The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York has said it intended to sidestep discussion of official legislative acts and focus instead on promises it says preceded Mr. Menendez’s votes and congressional actions.The judge, Sidney H. Stein of Federal District Court, ruled in March that although Mr. Menendez’s performance of a legislative act was protected conduct, “his promise to do the same is not.”Who Are Key Players in the Menendez Case?Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, are accused of taking part in a wide-ranging, international bribery scheme that lasted five years. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert Menendez Trial Jurors See Gold Bars at Heart of Bribery Case

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      An F.B.I. agent, testifying for the government, described his search of Senator Robert Menendez’s house in New Jersey.With the corruption trial of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey underway on Thursday, a prosecutor handed a juror in the first row of the jury box a plastic bag containing an object at the heart of the government’s case: a gold bar that glinted under the courtroom lights.One by one, jurors held the bag, turning it over in their hands and feeling its weight before passing it to their neighbor — the jury’s first tangible exposure to evidence prosecutors say was a bribe paid to Mr. Menendez, 70, and his wife.The prosecutor, Lara Pomerantz, soon handed jurors another bag containing several gold bars. But before she could hand over a third, the judge, Sidney H. Stein, said the jury “has gotten a feel for the weight of gold.”Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, have been charged with accepting gifts collectively worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, including gold, cash and a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible, in exchange for the senator’s dispensing of political favors to the governments of Egypt and Qatar and to three New Jersey businessmen.The senator and two of the businessmen — Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — are being tried together in Manhattan federal court. Ms. Menendez, 57, was to be tried with them, but her trial was postponed after her lawyers said she had a “serious medical condition.”On Thursday, the senator revealed that Ms. Menendez was being treated for breast cancer and was preparing to undergo a mastectomy and possible radiation treatment.Who Are Key Players in the Menendez Case?Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, are accused of taking part in a wide-ranging, international bribery scheme that lasted five years. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More