The corruption trial of US Senator Bob Menendez, a member of the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee, opened Monday in New York with jury selection.
• Read also: US Senator Bob Menendez pleads not guilty to obstruction of justice
• Read also: US Senator Bob Menendez pleads not guilty to corruption
• Read also: Wads of banknotes and gold bars: a US senator again prosecuted for corruption
Pursued since September with his wife and three alleged accomplices, Mr. Menendez, 70, is targeted by around twenty charges, including those of corruption, influence peddling for the benefit of Egypt and Qatar, as well as of acting as an agent of a foreign government.
The couple was accused at the start of the affair of having accepted between 2018 and 2022 “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in bribes, in cash or gold bars in particular, in exchange for their influence for “ protect and enrich” three businessmen from New Jersey, the state from which he was elected, and support the Egyptian government.
The parliamentarian, who pleads not guilty, remained deaf to calls for resignation from his own camp, but he gave up the presidency of the very powerful Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate at the end of 2023.
One of the three businessmen pleaded guilty in March to certain charges.
The senator, born to Cuban parents who emigrated to the United States, is on trial starting Monday with the two other businessmen, while his wife, Nadine Menendez, 57, will be tried in July.
Federal prosecutor Damian Williams had detailed the discovery, during a search of the couple’s home in June 2022, of “wads of banknotes stuffed in the pockets of his jacket”, three kilos of “gold bars” and a car of luxury, so many elements “which were part of the fraud”.
