By Luc Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters) -Nadine Menendez, the wife of former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, was convicted on Monday of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bribes in exchange for her husband doing favors for Egypt and New Jersey businessmen. Nadine Menendez, 58, was found guilty on all 15 counts she faced, […]
Politics
Former US Senator Bob Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, convicted at bribery trial
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By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Nadine Menendez, the wife of former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, was convicted on Monday of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bribes in exchange for her husband doing favors for Egypt and New Jersey businessmen.
Nadine Menendez, 58, was found guilty on all 15 counts she faced, including bribery, honest services wire fraud, and conspiracy for a public official to act as a foreign agent. She had pleaded not guilty.
Menendez will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein in Manhattan on June 12.
Bob Menendez, a Democrat who represented New Jersey for 18-1/2 years, was sentenced in January to 11 years in prison.
“Nadine Menendez and Senator Menendez were partners in crime,” acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky said in a statement after the verdict. “Together, Nadine Menendez and the Senator placed their own interests and greed ahead of the interests of the citizens the Senator was elected to serve.”
The once powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations had been convicted at trial last July for shepherding military aid to Egypt, providing assistance to Qatar and interfering in local prosecutions of businessmen in exchange for bribes including gold, cash and a Mercedes-Benz.
Menendez resigned from the Senate the next month.
Nadine Menendez was to be tried with her husband for her alleged role in his scheme, but her trial was postponed after her lawyers said she needed treatment for breast cancer.
Prosecutors said New Jersey businessman Wael Hana arranged meetings between the senator and Egyptian officials, who pressed him to sign off on military aid.
In return, the businessman put Nadine Menendez on the payroll of a company he controlled, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors also said Hana and Nadine Menendez communicated requests and directives from Egyptian officials to the senator.
Hana was convicted alongside Menendez and sentenced to just over eight years in prison.
Another defendant, businessman Fred Daibes, was also convicted and received a seven-year prison sentence.
Menendez was the first U.S. senator found guilty of acting as a foreign agent.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)