Menendez research would include questions about luxury gifts

Federal prosecutors and the FBI are investigating whether Senator Robert Menendez or his wife received undeclared gifts of a luxury car and a Washington apartment from a halal meat company that is also the focus of a criminal investigation, two people with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday.

The investigation into Mr. Menendez, a Democrat who is New Jersey’s senior senator, is related to a government search of the meat company’s offices and the president’s home, according to an attorney who met with prosecutors.

The search followed the Egyptian government’s decision in 2019 to make the company, IS EG Halal of Edgewater, NJ, the country’s only authorized importer of halal meat from anywhere in the world. The United States Department of Agriculture warned that the abrupt change could drive up meat prices for Egypt’s 90 million Muslims and disrupt the market.

Mr Menendez, the chairman of the foreign relations committee, has said he was willing to assist investigators and a spokesperson has maintained that the senator is confident the investigation will “successfully close”.

“I’m sure it will come to nothing,” Mr Menendez said last week NBC news.

NBC New York News Channel 4 was the first to report the investigation into unreported gifts. Federal officials declined to comment Thursday night.

In the 2019 search of IS EG Halal’s office and the home of the president, Wael Hana, officials seized computers, mobile phones and documents, according to court documents. Mr Hana, a Christian who immigrated to the United States from Egypt, has acknowledged in court documents that he had no previous experience of declaring that meat was prepared under Islamic law before he started running his now global business in April 2019 .

A spokeswoman for Mr. Hana denied on Thursday that he or the company had given gifts to Mr. Menendez or his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez.

“IS EG Halal has been awarded its halal certification contract with Egypt without any assistance from Senator Menendez or any other US government official,” spokeswoman Ellen Davis said in a statement.

Ms. Davis said allegations of gifts being provided “by anyone associated with IS EG Halal to Senator Menendez or his wife, let alone in exchange for any kind of favorable treatment, are totally baseless.”

Until recently, there have been few outward signs of movement in the federal investigation into Mr. Menendez since an initial round of subpoenas went public in October. And Mr. Menendez, 69, has continued to raise money for his anticipated term next year for a fourth term in the Senate. The investigation is being conducted by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the FBI’s New York office.

Two weeks ago, as part of the same investigation, Manhattan prosecutors subpoenaed documents related to a bill stalled in the New Jersey Legislature that would limit the height of construction projects near the Palisades along the Hudson River. The subpoena requested correspondence about the bill from Mr. Menendez, Ms. Menendez or Fred Daibes, one of the region’s most prominent developers, according to a person familiar with the contents who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to review it. to discuss the document publicly .

Mr. Daibes pleaded guilty last year to a federal banking crime as part of a negotiation agreement. The arrangement does not require jail time and his sentencing has been postponed, fueling speculation that he cooperated with the Menendez investigation.

On Thursday, one of Mr. Daibes’ attorneys, Timothy M. Donohue, said he had no comment on the status of the investigation in New York’s Southern District.

“But I can confirm that Mr. Daibes is absolutely not a cooperating witness in that case or any other case,” Mr. Donohue said in an email.

Mr Menendez and his wife were married in October 2020 in a small ceremony in Queens.

Even before their engagement, the couple had already started traveling together a lot. They received wedding gifts from a who’s who of New Jersey leaders, according to a disclosure report Mr. Menendez filed in May 2021 as required of federal officials.

In March 2022, Mr. Menendez amended that report to add an asset belonging to his wife: gold bars valued between $100,001 and $250,000.

The Senator’s disclosure reports make no mention of a Mercedes or an apartment. Menendez Senate spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said stories relying on unnamed sources create a “suggestion of impropriety without any facts”.

She did not directly address claims that the federal investigation had expanded to include questions about a Mercedes and a Washington apartment. But she said in an email that it was irresponsible to rely on unnamed sources for such “extreme and harmful claims,” ​​adding that “such reporting should require legitimate and named sources, otherwise there should be concern about breaking laws.”

Ms. Menendez, who has a master’s degree in French from New York University, has worked for Fusion Diagnostics, a medical testing facility in New Jersey. She also started a consulting firm, Strategic International Business Consultants, in June 2019, according to New Jersey’s disclosure reports and business registration records.

Mrs. Morrill declined to answer questions about the gold bullion.

Peter P. Paradis, who retired in January from his position as deputy assistant inspector general for investigations at the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General, said it was critical that questions be raised about the sudden control of the halal company on the worldwide flow of halal meat to Egypt.

“If you had a company that now has a global monopoly on anything, that should be a concern that people should at least be asking questions about,” Mr Paradis said in an interview.

“And I believe that answers need to be given.”