Atlanta, USA (CNN) – The federal indictment directed against the Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez, and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, stated that they accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for exploiting the senator’s position for the benefit of the Egyptian authorities.
The list added that this includes providing sensitive information to the Egyptian government, and secretly helping to direct military aid to Egypt.
“These bribes included cash, gold, mortgage payments, a job for his wife with no pay, a luxury car, and other items of value,” the indictment says.
According to the indictment, Nadine, Menendez’s wife, and her friend and current co-defendant, the Egyptian-American businessman Wael Hanna, presented the Democratic Senator to intelligence and army officials in Egypt.
As ranking member and then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez had significant influence over military contracts and aid, including to Egypt, which the indictment says was among the largest recipients of U.S. military aid over the past several years.
The indictment added that during dinner and meetings with Egyptian officials, Menendez and his then-girlfriend, his current wife (Nadine), promised to use his political power to facilitate American military sales and financing to Egypt, in exchange for placing his wife on the payroll of one of the other defendant’s companies. The indictment says she was assigned to a “non-attendance position.”
After one of these meetings, according to the indictment, Menendez asked the US State Department for highly sensitive information about the number of people working at the US Embassy in Egypt, as well as their nationalities.
Menendez later sent a detailed text message about a person who worked at the embassy to his then-girlfriend, who forwarded it to the other defendant, who in turn sent the sensitive information to an Egyptian official.
The senator was also accused of disclosing non-public information about military aid to Egypt to people who passed the information to Egyptian officials.
Menendez also helped draft a letter on behalf of the government of Egypt “aimed at persuading other US Senators to release $300 million in aid to Egypt.”
The indictment said that after being provided with a brief passed on from the Egyptian government for the country’s military funding and sales requests, Menendez asked his wife to pass along a message that he would “sign this day to Egypt.”
Menendez claimed in his letter that the funding, with a total value of at least $99 million, includes target practice rounds and 10,000 rounds of tank ammunition. With a note stating, “These tank shells are intended for tanks that Egypt has had for many years, and they are using them in the anti-terrorism campaign in Sinai.”
Eventually, the message reached an Egyptian official, who responded with a “thumbs up” emoji, meaning “Okay.”
2023-09-22 16:48:31
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