Former US senator Bob Menendez has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for accepting bribes of gold and cash and acting as an agent of Egypt — crimes his own lawyer said earned him the nickname “Gold Bar Bob”.
US District Judge Sidney H. Stein in Manhattan announced the sentence on Wednesday after Menendez tearfully addressed the judge, saying he’d lost everything he cared about, except for his family.
“You were successful, powerful, you stood at the apex of our political system,” the judge said.
”Somewhere along the way, and I don’t know when it was, you lost your way and working for the public good became working for your good.”
Menendez was once one of of the most influential senators in American politics.
He resigned from politics after his conviction last year.
The prosecution had been seeking a 15-year prison sentence for Menendez, while his defence lent on his long career of public service to argue for less than two years behind bars.
Menendez was found guilty of receiving bribes from Egyptian officials and his quest to aid three men who showered him with lucrative gifts.
Senator Bob Menendez will spend 11 years in prison. (AP: Mark Schiefelbein)
FBI agents who searched his California home found US$480,000 ($770,000) in cash, some of it stuffed inside boots and the pockets of clothing hung in the couple’s closets.
They also seized gold bars worth an estimated $150,000.
Prosecutors said Menendez had “put his high office up for sale in exchange for this hoard of bribes”, including by serving Egypt’s interests as he worked to protect a meat certification monopoly one businessman had established with the Egyptian government.
Menendez also provided Egyptian officials with information about staff at the US Embassy in Cairo and ghostwrote a letter to fellow senators encouraging them to lift a hold on $300 million in military aid to Egypt.
Prosecutors said for other bribes, Menendez attempted to persuade a federal prosecutor in New Jersey to go easy on Fred Daibes, a politically influential real estate developer accused of bank fraud.
And at the trial, another businessman, Jose Uribe, testified that he helped Nadine Menendez get a Mercedes-Benz convertible after the senator sought to pressure state prosecutors to drop criminal probes of his associates.
Menendez says he is innocent of any crime, arguing his interactions with Egyptian officials were normal for the head of the Foreign Relations Committee, and that he always put American interests first.
“Unsurprisingly, Senator Menendez’s conviction has rendered him a national punchline and stripped him of every conceivable personal, professional, and financial benefit,” his lawyers in a pre-sentencing submission.
“Bob is now 71, with his long-built reputation in tatters. He has suffered financial and professional ruin.”
He denied taking any bribes and said the gold bars belonged to his wife.
AP
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