NEW YORK – Federal prosecutors charging New Jersey U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez with taking a wide range of bribes said a diamond engagement ring, stashes of cash in his house were involved and that he pushed mayors to do COVID-19 tests at a laboratory that was paying his wife.

The New York Times outlined the growing case against the Democrat who has long been a friend of Greece, Cyprus and the Greek-American community, authorities alleging he was the center of an elaborate corruption scheme.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/13/nyregion/menendez-bribes-ring.html

Prosecutors said he reached to mayors in New Jersey during the pandemic, in late 2020 and early 2021, to ask them to authorize use of a specific laboratory — which at the time was paying his wife – to perform COVID testing.

The sensational case has also featured a Mercedes-Benz, gold bars, exercise equipment and cash found in his office, stated a Federal indictment, including the ring that brought in-fighting between co-defendants.

Wael Hana, a longtime friend of Menendez’s wife – who is also charged in the alleged conspiracy, attempted to cheat her out of the full value of the ring, according to court documents.

Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman who founded a halal meat company prosecutors say was used to funnel bribes to the Menendezes, threatened to upset plans for Menendez to assist the government in a secret plot.

“(Hana) was about to ruin things with Bob,” a confidential source, who was in touch with Egyptian officials, said, according to the government’s filing. “Bob who is starting to listen to us.”

Menendez has pleaded not guilty, as have his wife, Hana and two other defendants. Lawyers for the senator did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and his wife’s lawyers and Hana’s also didn’t respond.

The new filing comes in response to the Senator’s request to suppress evidence seized during searches of the house he shares with his wife in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. His lawyer’s said that warrants permitting the searches were overly broad and ignored evidence favorable to him.

But in justifying the need for the warrants, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York listed more details about the bribery plot, including secretly recorded conversations and finding two bags each filled with $100,000 in cash.

(“In the basement of Menendez and Nadine Menendez’s residence, on top of a large rack of clothes hangers,” prosecutors wrote, adding, “Under the jackets were four boots, stuffed with cash, including one boot containing in excess of $5,000 in $50 bills.”)

As part of the bribery plot, prosecutors said Hana arranged for carpet installation at their home and placed calls to what the couple referred to as her “007” phone — “an apparent reference to James Bond, the prosecutors wrote.

The engagement ring, according to prosecutors, was given to Nadine Menendez as part of a $150,000 bribe from a man who enlisted Menendez’s help to avoid criminal penalties after being charged with insurance fraud in New Jersey.

Roughly $35,000 of the $150,000 bribe was intended to pay for the diamond ring, according to prosecutors. But the ring Hana bought cost only $12,000 and used the rest to buy two watches, a bracelet and a necklace for himself.

Prosecutors struck back at an assertion by Menendez’s lawyers that the case stemmed from “the government’s apparent zeal to “get back” at him for avoiding conviction in a 2017 Federal corruption trial that ended in a hung jury.