Meet Bob Menendez and his co-defendants

When Sen. Bob Menendez proposed to Nadine Arslanian in fall 2019, he burst into song with a show tune about how “towers of gold are still too little.”

Three years later, when federal investigators searched the couple’s New Jersey home, they would find gold bars, a bounty prosecutors allege the couple collected as part of an audacious scheme to trade the senator’s power for personal fortune.

The senator and his wife are just two of a long list of colorful characters who will be the center of Menendez’s second corruption trial in less than a decade.

That case, which goes to trial on Monday, involves a trio of New Jersey businesspeople who are accused of bribing the couple with the gold, wads of cash and other valuable items, like a luxury car and exercise equipment.

In exchange, the senator is alleged to have tried to use his office to influence the outcome of state and federal criminal cases, do favors for the Egyptian government and help a major New Jersey developer land a deal with an investment company run by a member of the Qatari royal family.

Originally, the case had five defendants, including Menendez and his wife. One of the businesspeople, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty earlier this year. Nadine Menendez will be tried separately, pending the outcome of a health issue.

The expected two-month trial of the remaining three men — Wael Hana, Fred Daibes and Menendez, who have all pleaded not guilty — begins on Monday and will be overseen by an experienced and no-nonsense federal judge.

Here are the key players involved in the case:

Sen. Bob Menendez

From his beginnings in a Union City tenement as the child of working-class Cuban immigrant parents, Bob Menendez began working the byzantine angles of Hudson County politics early.

Menendez was mentored by Mayor William Musto, a political boss in his own right, and would win a local school board seat at age 20 and soon be appointed board secretary. But Menendez would soon clash with Musto and his allies, leading him to infamously don a bulletproof vest at the mayor’s corruption trial.

Menendez’s career ascended quickly. He was soon elected to the state Assembly, then Senate and then the House of Representatives. In 2006, following then-Sen. Jon Corzine’s swearing-in as governor, Corzine appointed Menendez to the Senate seat, where he developed a reputation as a foreign policy hawk and steadfast backer of Israel willing to take on Democratic presidential administrations. By 2015, Menendez became chair and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations — a tenure interrupted twice by federal indictments.

Though Menendez ascended to the heights of power in Washington, the whiff of Hudson County’s notoriously corrupt politics never left him. And Menendez continued to hold massive influence in his native Hudson County, acting as a political boss of sorts, holding sway in local decisions and which candidates would get the backing of the powerful Hudson County Democratic Organization.

But just as Menendez never left Hudson County politics, the specter of its corruption never left his career. During his first campaign for a full Senate term in 2006, then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie subpoenaed records related to Menendez and a nonprofit, North Hudson Community Action Corp., that over a nine-year period paid the senator about $300,000 to rent office space in a Union City house he owned. Menendez, as a House member, had helped the nonprofit secure federal grants.

That investigation was closed, and Menendez got a rare “clearance letter” from federal prosecutors before seeking his next full term in 2012. But shortly after that, federal prosecutors began looking into Menendez’s relationship with Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, a friend and donor. In 2015, Menendez was indicted for allegedly taking bribes from Melgen in the form of lavish vacations, political donations and private jet flights in exchange for using his foreign policy leverage to block the U.S. donation of security screening equipment to the Dominican Republic to benefit a company owned by Melgen, and that he interceded on Melgen’s behalf with federal health officials over a multimillion-dollar Medicare billing dispute.

Menendez beat those charges thanks to a hung jury, and in typical fashion vowed “To those who were digging my political grave so they could jump into my seat, I know who you are and I won’t forget you.”

Menendez’s fiancee left him just before his 2017 trial, and not long after, he struck up a relationship with his current wife and co-defendant, Nadine Menendez. It was she, according to reports, who introduced him to some of his co-defendants, for whom he allegedly did favors in exchange for bribes.

— Matt Friedman 

Nadine Menendez

Nadine Menendez, formerly Nadine Arslanian, is at the center of the charges facing her husband, though she will now be tried separately for health reasons.

Shortly after she and Sen. Bob Menendez began dating in early 2018, Arslanian introduced her future husband to a longtime friend, Wael “Will” Hana, an Egyptian American businessperson who lived in New Jersey. According to federal prosecutors, Hana began using Nadine’s new relationship to cultivate his own with the senator that, according to their indictment, blossomed into a series of conspiracies. Eventually, she was passing information to the senator from Egyptian officials, at least some of whom she understood were intelligence officials, according to federal prosecutors.

With the senator’s help, she set up a company called Strategic: International Business Consultants LLC that federal prosecutors say was used to accept some of the alleged bribes. Some bribes were cash and gold, others were valuable goods, including a Mercedes-Benz after she had an accident in late 2018 that killed a pedestrian.

Even before they married, she was offering up her future husband’s power to Hana and Egyptian officials, according to federal prosecutors. “What else can the love of my life do for you?” she said during a February 2019 dinner at a Washington, D.C., steakhouse with the senator, Hana and an Egyptian intelligence official, according to the indictment.

One of the promises outlined in the indictment was to get Nadine Menendez a low-or-no-show job with Hana’s company, a company that eventually received a monopoly from the Egyptian government over halal meat entering the country from the U.S.

A profile in New York magazine described Nadine Menendez as “a tall blonde divorcée with a décolletage-first fashion sense” who, 13 years younger than the senator, “was a fun-loving fixture on the Hudson County singles scene.” It’s unclear exactly how and when they met, but they’ve said it was at a Union City IHOP.

What is clear: The senator proposed after serenading her in front of the Taj Mahal (not the old one in Atlantic City but the older one in India). “Towers of gold are still too little, these hands could hold the world, but it'll never be enough,” he sang before putting a ring on her finger. The ring, according to government records in the court record, may have been paid for using bribes from Hana.

One investigative report contained in legal filings suggests an on-and-off relationship between the senator and his future wife, citing a “lull” in their relationship where the senator asked for the ring back before they reconciled.

They married in fall 2020, an event NJ.com described as “a small outdoor reception with family and friends.” Guests included several characters who would figure in their legal woes, including Fred Daibes and Philip Sellinger, who is now the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

Not only is she at the heart of the case against the senator, but she may be at the heart of his defense. According to portions of a court filing that the senator’s legal team sought to keep sealed, he plans to blame her for some of the activities outlined in the indictment.

Her attorneys, who at least last year had been paid out of the senator’s legal defense fund, have not responded to a request for comment.

Her trial is tentatively scheduled to begin later this summer, but much depends on her health.

— Ry Rivard

Fred Daibes

Most of Menendez’s co-defendants would be virtually unknown but for their association with the senator. The one exception is Fred Daibes, a powerful real estate developer from Edgewater — a narrow, three-mile strip of land just south of the George Washington Bridge.

Prosecutors say Daibes’ fingerprints or DNA was found on envelopes of cash seized from the Menendez home. Serial numbers traced two gold bars in the Menendezes’ possession back to Daibes, according to prosecutors. That cash and gold, prosecutors claim, were bribes in exchange for Sen. Bob Menendez interfering in a federal bank fraud case against Daibes, going as far as to shop around for U.S. Attorney candidates who would be sympathetic to the developer.

“[H]e’s an amazing friend and as loyal as they come,” Daibes allegedly texted Nadine Menendez about her husband.

Look across the river from Manhattan and you’ll see some of the fruits of Daibes’ 40-year career, in which he helped build the once-industrial New Jersey waterfront into the “Gold Coast” of gleaming residential high-rises with million-dollar Manhattan views marketed to New York City commuters.

The Lebanon-born Daibes, 66, spent his early childhood in a refugee camp before the family emigrated to the United States and settled in New Jersey, according to The New York Times. He worked in his father’s masonry business and, according to a friendly profile, in the mid-1980s founded Daibes Enterprises with his siblings.

Daibes would go on to become the dominant developer in Edgewater. And he had a history of dealing in gold bars. In 2013, armed robbers broke into Daibes’ high-rise condo, tied him up, beat him and stole $3 million in gold bars, jewelry, diamonds and cash. Four people, including the building’s super and two residents, pleaded guilty to the “inside job.”

An avid car collector, Daibes also made headlines for purchasing a 1942 Mercedes some suspected had been used by Adolf Hitler, though experts cast doubt on that claim.

Daibes was already a controversial figure before his alleged bribes to Menendez came to light. He was indicted in over a dozen counts related to bank fraud in 2018, with his trial being repeatedly delayed until he pleaded guilty to one count that carried no prison time. Following Daibes’ indictment and allegations that Menendez interfered with federal authorities to seek leniency, a federal judge tossed Daibes’ plea deal in that case.

— Matt Friedman 

Wael “Will” Hana

Wael Hana, known as Will, is an Egyptian American businessperson whose various ventures had not taken off — until a longtime friend, Nadine Arslanian, began dating a U.S. senator.

In the months and years that followed, Hana and Arslanian introduced Sen. Bob Menendez to Egyptian intelligence and military officials, according to federal prosecutors.

Hana, a Coptic Christian, then became a halal meat mogul when Egyptians officials in spring 2019 granted one of his companies an exclusive permit to import and export meat prepared according to Islam’s dietary requirements. According to federal prosecutors, part of the money from that monopoly was then used to bribe the Menendezes.

When the monopoly was scrutinized by American agricultural officials, prosecutors allege the senator stepped in to brush back concerned bureaucrats and keep Hana’s monopoly in place — one of the “official acts” that prosecutors allege Menendez did in exchange for bribes.

Hana, who returned from Egypt last fall after the indictment to face charges, has been unable to see his family who remains back in Egypt, according to his attorney.

There are signs in investigative documents filed with the court that Egyptian officials worried that Hana was compromised somehow. An FBI report in 2020 said a source had heard the Egyptian intelligence service, known as EGIS, had “cut him off and was looking for another individual” to manage the halal company’s operations and someone had instructed “at least one identified EGIS asset to cease all contact” with Hana. In 2021, FBI records also show investigators heard EGIS “still considered Hana to be burned” and likely “working for the FBI or another entity in the U.S. Government” and that Egyptian officials were looking to seize Hana and his family’s assets in Egypt.

— Ry Rivard 

Jose Uribe

Jose Uribe, a businessperson from Clifton, New Jersey, with a checkered past, is one of the most important players in the case but the least known.

Uribe, 56, was indicted along with Menendez and the four other co-defendants, but in March suddenly pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.

Uribe sold insurance to transportation companies years ago but ran into trouble with state regulators. In 2011, an administrative law judge ruled that Uribe’s company had engaged in “repetitive and egregious acts of incompetence, unworthiness and financial irresponsibility in the conduct of insurance business.” Months later, Uribe pleaded guilty to state charges of theft by deception and insurance fraud.

Uribe, an insurance producer at the time, admitted to taking about $77,000 in insurance premiums from clients but never actually using it to pay insurance carriers. He was sentenced to three years of probation and had his insurance producer license revoked.

But Uribe was in the trucking and insurance business when he came to know the Menendezes, according to the federal indictment. And the business had once again come under the scrutiny of state authorities. According to the indictment, an associate of Uribe’s, whom he referred to as a relative, was charged with insurance fraud relating to a trucking company for which Uribe’s business brokered the policy. Uribe was “implicated in the conduct” of the unnamed defendant.

Menendez allegedly called then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to intervene in the case in exchange for a Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible for Nadine Menendez, which replaced a car she had totaled when she hit and killed a pedestrian in Bogota in 2018.

While the Menendezes have proclaimed their innocence, Uribe said the car was a bribe when he appeared in court March 1 to plead guilty to seven charges, including bribery and honest services fraud.

“I knew that giving a car in return for influencing a United States senator to stop a criminal investigation was wrong,” Uribe told Judge Sidney Stein, “and I deeply regret my actions.”

— Matt Friedman 

Judge Sidney Stein

Judge Sidney Stein has overseen high-profile cases before — he sentenced Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast member Jennifer Shah to 78 months in prison for telemarketing fraud, and he prevented then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s efforts to investigate lending practices of major banks.

Now, he’s presiding over the corruption trial of Sen. Bob Menendez. Stein, a Clinton administration appointee who grew up about 10 miles from Menendez, in Passaic, New Jersey, has been on the court in the Southern District of New York for nearly three decades. He is seen by his colleagues as fair-minded in his application of the law, something that can already be seen in early filings in the Menendez trial. Stein refers to the indicted senator the same way as anyone else — as “mister,” not as “senator.”

Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, a former fellow judge in the Southern District of New York who now works for Boies Schiller Flexner, told POLITICO, “His reputation is that of a very careful and cautious and fair-minded judge, who doesn't favor one side or the other, but tries to be sure that everybody gets a fair shake, and he runs a very tight but pleasant courtroom.”

The Menendez trial will be as in the public eye as any, but Scheindlin says, “I don't think it fazes him at all, whether somebody is low-profile, high-profile, they’ll get the same good trial in his courtroom.”

Stein has also kept the trial mostly on time, only delaying the initial start date by around a week. This stands in stark contrast to Menendez’s last corruption trial, which lasted nearly three years from the initial indictment to his eventual mistrial.

— Katherine Dailey