N.J. Sen. Menendez hit with new corruption allegations for aiding Qatar

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday filed a new superseding indictment against U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), accusing the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of providing favorable statements for Qatar to help a New Jersey real estate developer as part of an ongoing bribery scheme.

In the superseding indictment filed in Manhattan, prosecutors alleged that Menendez, 70, abused his office to help developer Fred Daibes secure funding from a Qatari company with ties to that Gulf nation for a project in New Jersey. Daibes has been charged in the case with other bribery allegations involving Menendez.

Prosecutors wrote that “Menendez agreed to and did accept payment from Daibes knowing that Daibes expected Menendez in exchange to use his influence and power and breach his official duty to assist Daibes, who was seeking millions of dollars in investment from a fund with ties to the Government of Qatar, by performing acts to benefit the Government of Qatar.”

Menendez has pleaded not guilty in the case.

Adam Fee, one of his lawyers, said in a statement Tuesday: “The government’s new allegations stink of desperation. Despite what they’ve touted in press releases, the government does not have the proof to back up any of the old or new allegations against Senator Menendez. What they have instead is a string of baseless assumptions and bizarre conjectures based on routine, lawful contacts between a Senator and his constituents or foreign officials. They are turning this into a persecution, not a prosecution.”

Fee continued: “At all times, Senator Menendez acted entirely appropriately with respect to Qatar, Egypt, and the many other countries he routinely interacts with. Those interactions were always based on his professional judgment as to the best interests of the United States because he is, and always has been, a patriot. This latest Indictment only exposes the lengths to which these hostile prosecutors will go to poison the public before a trial even begins. But these new allegations don’t change a thing, and their theories won’t survive the scrutiny of the court or a jury.”

Menendez survived a prior bribery case in 2017. With his current case pending, he stepped down in September as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The new superseding indictment describes multiple messages and meetings to further the goal of helping Daibes with Qatari investors. Soon after Menendez and Daibes attended a private event in Manhattan hosted in 2021 by the Qatari government, Daibes used an encrypted messaging application to ask Menendez a question.

Daibes sent photos of a computer monitor with images of wristwatches with prices ranging from $9,990 to $23,990 and asked the senator: “How about one of these.”

The indictment states that Qatari investment company signed a letter of intent with Daibes, and in 2023 entered a joint venture with a company controlled by Daibes to invest tens of millions of dollars in the New Jersey project.

The New York Times reported that the project was a residential high-rise in Edgewater, N.J. In 2023, Daibes finalized a $45 million shared-ownership agreement for the Edgewater project with a company founded by a member of Qatar’s royal family, the Times reported.

Last September, federal prosecutors filed their original indictment accusing Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian, of accepting bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from three New Jersey businessmen between 2018 and 2022 in exchange for using his power and influence to protect and enrich them.

» READ MORE: From gold bars to a pricey car: All the bribes Sen. Bob Menendez has been accused of accepting over the years

Prosecutors alleged that many of Menendez’s positions toward Egypt were bought with gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — including gold bars, cash-stuffed envelopes, and a Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible worth more than $60,000.

Then, in October, Menendez was accused in the prosecution’s first superseding indictment of taking bribes in exchange for providing “sensitive U.S. government information” that made its way into the hands of Egyptian military and intelligence officials.

The October superseding indictment also accused Menendez of taking other steps to secretly aid the country’s government, including ghostwriting a 2018 letter to fellow senators encouraging them to lift a hold on $300 million in aid.