“You were successful, powerful, you stood at the apex of our political system,” U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein told Menendez in a packed Manhattan courtroom. ”Somewhere along the way, and I don’t know when it was, you lost your way and working for the public good became working for your good.”
Menendez resigned from the Senate after his conviction last year. The focus of the case against him was a multi-layered bribery scheme involving Menendez, his wife Nadine, Egyptian-American businessman Wael Hana and a number of Egyptian officials.
The prosecutors in the case also accused Menendez of being involved in another bribery scheme involving a halal certification company.
In 2019, IS EG Halal was awarded an exclusive contract with the Egyptian government to certify Halal meat exports worldwide. Seven longtime companies across the globe were suddenly fired by the Egyptian government and those firms lost millions in business to the Edgewater firm — a firm run by a Christian with little prior experience in Islamic certification of international meat imports and exports.
They said that Hana, who was also sentenced to prison in this case, gave Menendez’s wife $10,000 per month.
Menendez worked to stop the US government from critically examining Hana’s company, IS EG Halal, which certified halal meat for export to the US. IS EG Halal, a New Jersey start-up, had exclusive control over the certification of halal food exports from the US to Egypt.
A $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible gifted to Nadine was part of the multifaceted corruption scheme, according to prosecutors.
A search of the Menendez home in 2022 last summer revealed $480,000 in cash, much of it stuffed into envelopes, in clothing, closets and a safe, with some of the envelopes bearing the fingerprints of Fred Daibes, one of the other defendants in the case.
Two of the men convicted of bribing Menendez also got substantial prison terms Wednesday. The judge sentenced real estate developer Fred Daibes to seven years in prison. Wael Hana, an entrepreneur, was sentenced to eight years.
Menendez’s wife faces trial in March on many of the same charges as her husband.
