A New Jersey businessman testified Friday that he bribed Sen. Bob Menendez, telling jurors in the state Democrat’s federal corruption trial that he offered the lawmaker’s wife a Mercedes-Benz to drop a criminal investigation.
“She agreed to the terms” Jose Uribe He spoke to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. In March 2019, Nadine Menendez offered her 70-year-old senator husband a $60,000 convertible if he could get the state attorney general’s office to drop an investigation into two of her husband’s associates.
The terms of the deal included giving Nadine Menendez a new Mercedes-Benz C-300 in exchange for the six-term senator’s “power and influence” to “do whatever it takes to thwart and end the investigation,” Uribe testified.
Uribe, 57, pleaded guilty in March and is the central witness in the government’s wide-ranging corruption case against the Menendezes, in which the embattled congressman and his wife are accused of accepting cars, $150,000 worth of gold bars, $566,000 in cash and other lavish gifts in return for favors to Uribe, businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Dibes and the Egyptian and Qatari governments.
“I knew it was wrong to offer a car to a United States senator in exchange for lobbying him to drop a criminal investigation,” Uribe said in court during his arraignment.
“I deeply regret my actions.”
Uribe told jurors on Friday that he conspired with Hana to bribe the couple to thwart an investigation into his friend Elvis Parra’s trucking business and his own insurance company, which insured Parra’s trucks.
Former New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal testified Thursday that Menendez had pressed him to discuss the trucking industry investigation in 2019 but quickly silenced the lawmaker.
Both Bob and Nadine Menendez are facing 18 criminal charges in connection with the bribery scheme.
If convicted, the senator faces up to 45 years in prison on each charge.
