New York, July 17 (IANS) Democratic Party Senator Bob Menendez, who headed the powerful US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been convicted of acting as a “foreign agent” for Egypt, and of a slew of corruption charges.
After a trial that featured 13 gold bars and stacks of $480,000 in currency notes found in the New Jersey senator’s home and a Mercedes Benz gifted to his wife, a jury gave the verdict on Tuesday at a federal court in New York.
Prosecutors said that Menendez had met with Egyptian intelligence officials and had tried to speed up millions of dollars of military aid to that country.
The conviction capped the 70-year-old senator’s political career of 50 years, which saw the son of Cuban immigrants rise to leadership positions in the Senate where he has served for 18 years.
Chuck Schumer, the leader of the majority Democratic Party in the Senate demanded his immediate resignation, before his term ends on the last day of December.
Menendez is planning to run for re-election as an independent.
Protesting his innocence while leaving the courthouse, he said, “I’ve never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country.”
An appointee of President Joe Biden, the prosecutor, Damian Williams, said, “Now that the jury has convicted Bob Menendez, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end.”
Menendez was convicted on 16 charges that included wire fraud (using telecommunications for fraudulent activities), bribery and extortion.
Two businessmen were also convicted of bribing him.
His second wife, Nadine Menendez, was charged in connection with the case but her trial has been delayed because she is undergoing treatment for cancer.
During Menendez’s trial, lawyers tried to shift blame to his wife asserting that the gold bars found at their home were in her bedroom and were hers and that she had money problems that she hid from the senator while trying to amass assets.
But the prosecution countered that there were communications between them showing that he was in on the schemes.
In one melodramatic moment during the trial, Menendez’s sister Caridad Gonzalez testified that as Cuban refugees it was tradition in the family to keep cash in their homes because of the insecurity they had faced.
One of the strange stories to emerge at the trial involved a businessman who bribed Menendez for getting a monopoly to certify as halal US beef exports to Egypt after the senator intervened on his behalf.
Menendez was also charged with using his power to try to get New Jersey prosecutors to scuttle an insurance fraud case against two businessmen, one of whom had admitted guilt on a bribery charge and said that he gave the Mercedes Benz to the senator’s wife.
In another corruption case involving a member of Congress, Democratic Party Representative Henry Cuellar and his wife have been charged by the Justice Department in Texas with bribery and money laundering involving a Mexican bank and an Azerbaijan-controlled oil and gas company.
(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)
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