In exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including gold bars, cash, and a luxury convertible, Robert Menendez allegedly agreed to use his official position to help Wael Hana, Jose Uribe, Fred Daibes, and the Egyptian government.
The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, and the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), James Smith, said this morning that an indictment accusing U.S. four people has been charged with taking part in a years-long plan to bribe government officials.
They are Senator Robert Menendez, his wife NADINE MENENDEZ, a/k/a “Nadine Arslanian,” and three businessmen from New Jersey named WAEL HANA, a/k/a “Will Hana,” JOSE URIBE, and FRED DAIBES.
It is said in the indictment that MENENDEZ and his wife, NADINE MENENDEZ, took bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from HANA, URIBE, and DAIBES in return for MENENDEZ agreeing to use his official position to help the Egyptian government and protect and enrich them.
MENENDEZ agreed and tried to put pressure on a top U.S. official, among other things, in order to protect a business monopoly that Egypt gave to HANA, to mess up a criminal case being worked on by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office involving URIBE allies, and to mess up a federal criminal case being worked on by the U.S. Office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey against DAIBES. On September 27, 2023, at 10:30 a.m., MENENDEZ, NADINE MENENDEZ, HANA, URIBE, and DAIBES are set to appear in federal court in Manhattan. The case has been given to U.S. Judge Sidney H. Stein for the district.
According to U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, between 2018 and 2022, Senator Menendez and his wife had a corrupt relationship with Wael Hana, Jose Uribe, and Fred Daibes. These were three businessmen from New Jersey who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, such as cash, gold, a Mercedes Benz, and other valuable items, in exchange for Senator Menendez agreeing to use his power and influence to protect and enrich those businessmen. My office is determined to get rid of graft without fear or favor and without caring about politics. No changes will be made to this.
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James Smith, who is the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI, said, “The FBI has made investigating public corruption a top priority since the beginning. That hasn’t changed.” People lose faith in our government because of the claimed actions in this plot, and the honest and hardworking people who do their jobs every day are looked down upon unfairly. If a public official is willing to use their position for personal gain, or if someone is willing to pay a fee to get something they want, the FBI will make sure that they are punished in the criminal justice system for their dishonest behavior.
Based on the accusations in the indictment that was made public today in Manhattan federal court:
Robert Menendez is the US’s top diplomat. The Senator from New Jersey is in charge of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (“SFRC”). The couple started dating in February 2018 and got engaged in October 2019. They will get married in October 2020. Soon after they started dating in 2018, NADINE MENENDEZ put MENENDEZ in touch with WAEL HANA, a longtime friend who is from Egypt but lives in New Jersey and is close with Egyptian leaders. Fred Daibes was a real estate developer in New Jersey who had given a lot of money to Menendez over the years. Hana also did business with Jose Uribe, who worked in the insurance and trucking business in New Jersey.
Between 2018 and 2022, HANA, DAIBES, and URIBE offered and took payments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from MENENDEZ and NADINE MENENDEZ. Gold, cash, a luxury convertible, payments on NADINE MENENDEZ’s home mortgage, pay for a job that she didn’t show up for, home items, and other valuable things were given as bribes. As of June 2022, the FBI searched the homes of Menendez and Nadine Menendez in New Jersey.
The FBI found many of the items that were used in the bribery plan during that search. These included cash, gold, the expensive convertible, and furniture for the home. There was over $480,000 in cash found in the house, mostly hidden in envelopes, clothes, closets, and a safe. There was also over $70,000 in cash in Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box, which was searched under a different search warrant. Some of the packages had fingerprints and/or DNA from Daibes or his driver inside them. Another one of the packages was found in Menendez’s closet, inside jackets that had his name on them.
During the same search, agents also found furniture for the house that was given to them by HANA and DAIBES, URIBE’s expensive car parked in the garage, and gold bars worth more than $100,000 that were given to them by either HANA or DAIBES.
Roberts agreed to fight for HANA, URIBE, and DAIBES’s rights as senators in exchange for these and other valuable things. He also promised to help the Egyptian government. Because of this shady connection, Menendez agreed to do a number of official things that were against his duty. First, Menendez did things that helped the Egyptian government and Hana, such as putting too much pressure on a U.S. official, the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”), to try to protect a business patent that Egypt gave to Hana. Additionally, Menendez did things that were meant to stop the Office of the New Jersey Attorney General (“NJAG”) from investigating URIBE and his friends for crimes.
Third, Menendez suggested that the president pick a U.S. MENENDEZ thought he had the power to affect DAIBES’s lawyer and tried to stop a federal criminal case being brought by the U.S. United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey (“USAO-DNJ”) against DAIBES.
Promised steps to help Egypt and put pressure on the USDA
In 2018, not long after she started dating MENENDEZ, NADINE worked with HANA to set up MENENDEZ with Egyptian military and intelligence leaders. These connections helped set up a shady deal where HANA, with help from DAIBES and URIBE, paid bribes to MENENDEZ and NADINE so that MENENDEZ would do things that helped Egypt, HANA, and other people.
As part of the plan, Menendez gave Egyptian officials private, non-public information from the U.S. government and did other things to help the Egyptian government in secret. For instance, in or around May 2018, Menendez gave Egyptian officials secret details about the number and nationalities of people working in the U.S. The embassy is in Cairo, Egypt. This information wasn’t secret, but it was very sensitive because it could cause big problems with operations security if it got out to a foreign government or the public.
On or around May 7, 2018, ROBERT texted private, sensitive information about the embassy to his girlfriend at the time, NADINE. NADINE then sent it to HANA, who then sent it to a government official in Egypt. Menendez did not tell his professional staff or the State Department that he was doing this. In the later part of the same month, Menendez wrote a letter to other U.S. Senators urging them to release a hold on $300 million in help for Egypt. This letter was written by someone else and sent by Menendez to Nadine Menendez. NADINE MENENDEZ then sent it to HANA, who then sent it to Egyptian officials.
At different times between 2018 and 2022, MENENDEZ also told Egyptian officials, through NADINE, HANA, and/or DAIBES, that as head of the SFRC, he would allow or lift restrictions on foreign military aid and sales of military equipment to Egypt. In July 2018, for example, MENENDEZ texted NADINE to tell HANA that MENENDEZ was going to sign off on a multimillion-dollar sale of weapons to Egypt. These talks between Menendez and Egyptian officials were set up and attended by both Nadine Menendez and Hana.
NADINE forwarded this text to HANA, who then forwarded it to two Egyptian officials. One of them answered with a “thumbs up” emoji. Over the next few years, Menendez sent similar messages. In January 2022, ROBERTS sent NADINE a link to a news story about two upcoming foreign military sales to Egypt that would bring the total amount to about $2.5 billion. NADINE sent HANA this link and wrote, “Bob had to sign off on this.”
To get Menendez to agree to do these things and more, Hana offered to pay her. One of the payments came from IS EG Halal Certified, Inc. (“IS EG Halal”), a company in New Jersey that HANA ran with help and money from DAIBES. But IS EG Halal didn’t make much money until the spring of 2019 when the Egyptian government gave IS EG Halal exclusive rights to certify U.S. food exports to Egypt as meeting halal standards, even though neither HANA nor his company had any experience with setting halal standards. Hana made money from the monopoly, which he used to pay Nadine as promised.
Because the monopoly made prices go up for U.S. meat producers, the USDA called the Egyptian government in April or May 2019 and asked them to think again about giving IS EG Halal the monopoly rights. Ana and Nadine Menendez told Menendez about the USDA’s problems with IS EG Kosher’s monopoly. On May 23, 2019, Menendez called a high-level USDA official (“Official-1”) and told them to stop fighting IS EG Halal’s position as the only kosher certifier. When Official-1 tried to explain why the monopoly was bad for the U.S., Menendez said again that the USDA should not get in the way of IS EG Halal’s monopoly. Even though Official-1 didn’t give in to Menendez’s request, IS EG Halal still kept its stronghold.
After making money from IS EG Halal’s monopoly, HANA, sometimes with the help of DAIBES and URIBE, gave money and other valuable things to help the plan go forward. A good example is that around July 2019, when NADINE mortgage company started the default process, HANA had IS EG Halal pay around $23,000 to bring the mortgage up to date. After discussing various ways to pay off the debt with NADINE, URIBE, and DAIBES, HANA made the decision.
In late 2019, HANA and DAIBES got IS EG Halal to send NADINE three $10,000 checks for a job she didn’t show up for. Roberts and Nadine Menendez got more bribes, like cash and gold, as the scheme went on, including through the acts listed below.
Actions that were promised to try to mess up the NJAG criminal case
Also in 2019, HANA and URIBE offered to help Roberts and NADINE buy a new Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible worth more than $60,000. In exchange, Menendez agreed and tried to get in the way of the NJAG’s investigation into an employee of URIBE and the criminal insurance fraud case against an associate of URIBE.
URIBE, HANA, and/or NADINE told MENENDEZ more than once in 2019 about the NJAG’s investigation and prosecution of insurance theft. After those briefings, Menendez promised the top state prosecutor at the NJAG’s Office the luxury convertible if he could oversee the investigation and prosecution (“Official-2”). He called this person at least twice.
Sen Robert tried to get Official-2 to settle the case in a way that was better for the suspect during those conversations. Official-2 thought that Menendez’s acts were wrong and refused to step in. In the end, though, the case ended with a plea that meant no jail time, and the investigation never led to any charges being brought against URIBE’s employee.
Because of what Menendez did, URIBE gave NADINE $15,000 in cash for the April 2019 down payment on the luxury roadster.
After that, from 2019 to June 2022, URIBE paid Mercedes-Benz every month for the roadster. URIBE stopped making those monthly payments after the FBI talked to MENENDEZ, NADINE, and URIBE about the investigation.
Promised steps to try to stop the USAO-DNJ criminal case
In October 2018, the USAO-DNJ charged DAIBES with federal crimes for getting loans from a bank he started in New Jersey under fake pretenses. Between December 2020 and December 2022, DAIBES gave MENENDEZ and NADINE cash, furniture, and gold bars in exchange for MENENDEZ’s promise to try to change the outcome of the federal case against DAIBES.
To make this part of the plan work better, Menendez suggested that the President pick someone (called “Official-3) to be U.S. ROBERT thought he could have an effect on the case of DAIBES with the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey. As part of his efforts to change the result of Daibés’s case, Menendez also talked to Official-3 and another high-level official at the USAO-DNJ, named “Official-4.”
Officials 3 and 4 did not tell the USAO-DNJ prosecution team working on the DAIBES case that MENENDEZ had called them, and they did not change how they were handling the case because of what ROBERT did. Finally, Daibes’s case was settled with a plea deal that included a probationary term. DAIBES gave Menendez and Nadine many valuable things in exchange for Menendez’s help with the scheme to pay people. These included the two one-kilogram gold bars.
Three counts of conspiracy to commit bribery, one count of conspiracy to commit honest service fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit extortion under the color of official rights each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The 69-year-old man from Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, is being charged. If found guilty, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Two counts of conspiracy to commit bribery carry maximum sentences of five years in prison each. The other two counts carry maximum sentences of twenty years in prison each. Nadine, 56, of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right, which carries a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison.
One count of conspiracy to commit bribery carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and one count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud carries a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison. The people charged are: Wael Hana, 40, who used to live in Edgewater, New Jersey, but is originally from Egypt; Jose Uribe, 56, who lives in Clifton, New Jersey; and Fred Daibes, 66, who lives in Edgewater, New Jersey.
Congress sets the statutory maximum penalties. They are only shown here for informational reasons; a judge would decide how to sentence the defendants. Mr. Williams praised the FBI’s great work in investigations. Mr. Williams thanked the Criminal Prosecution Division of the Internal Revenue Service for its invaluable help with the probe.
The Public Corruption Unit of the Office is in charge of this case. It is the job of Assistant U.S. Attorneys Eli J. Mark, Paul Monteleoni, Lara Pomerantz, and Daniel C. Richenthal to bring charges. Because the charges in the indictment are only claims, the defendants are thought to be innocent until proven guilty.
This case is still going on. Please call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI and mention this case if you know anything about the charges or suspects in the indictment.