Businesspeople Do Not Dispute Giving Gold, Cash To Menendezes — But Say They Were ‘gifts’

NEW YORK — One of New Jersey’s most prominent real estate developers will not dispute that he gave cash and gold bars to Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, a defense attorney in their corruption trial said Thursday.

He will dispute the reasons for giving the senator the cash and gold, though.

Attorneys for the developer, Fred Daibes, and another co-defendant, Wael Hana — both accused by federal prosecutors of giving bribes in exchange for favors from Menendez — said during their separate opening statements Thursday that the government is trying to criminalize gifts among longtime friends. They said that the government was misinterpreting the gifts as bribes — and they said there is no evidence proving the gifts were more than that.

There’s “nothing criminal about being generous,” said Daibes attorney César de Castro. Daibes and Bob Menendez have known eachother for around 30 years, de Castro said. That’s the same argument Menendez and his friend, donor and co-defendant Salomon Melgen, made in their 2017 corruption trial that ended in a hung jury.

De Castro did not quantify during his opening statement the value of the cash and gold from Daibes to the Menendezes.

Federal prosecutors then called their first witness: FBI special agent Aristotelis Kougemitros, who led a June 2022 search of the Menendezes’ home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

After some dry testimony about the basics of the FBI’s search process, prosecutors pulled out some of the gold bars and passed them around to each member of the jury.

Kougemitros’ testimony was also designed to undermine Menendez’s attempt to point the finger at his wife, Nadine Menendez. On Wednesday, Menendez’s defense attorney had said gold was found in what he described as Nadine’s closet — and that the senator had his own closet.

But Kougemitros said — and photos from the search showed — that one gold bar was found on the floor inside the same closet as a Navy blazer that contained handwritten notes on Senate Democratic Caucus stationery from two months earlier.

Other gold bars were found in a safe found in the closet — a safe that also contained an airline ticket with the senator’s name on it.

Before the trial broke for lunch, prosecutors had not gotten to any information about who they believed had provided each bar of gold — as well as thousands of dollars in cash also found inside the closet or the safe.

The cash and gold bars have been among the most attention-grabbing parts of the corruption trial of Menendez, who is accused of using his influence to benefit the New Jersey businesspeople and the governments of Egypt and Qatar. In the government’s opening statements the day prior, federal prosecutors said Menendez was a “senator on the take.”

Larry Lustberg, an attorney for Hana, said that his client gave the Menendezes gold “mini-bars” worth approximately $1,800 — “just gifts” he said. Hana and Nadine Menendez have known each other since 2009 and were “like brother and sister,” he said. Nadine Menendez faces a separate trial after being diagnosed with breast cancer, which was disclosed Thursday.

Lustberg said that Nadine Menendez and Hana regularly gave each other gifts. But Hana gave more “generous” gifts to Nadine Menendez because of his affluence, he said, while Nadine Menendez’s gifts to Hana were more “thoughtful.” And Lustberg disputed that Hana helped pay for Nadine’s mortgage payments, saying they were loans.

Federal prosecutors have promised a cache of evidence connecting gold bars and cash to the defendants. Daibes’ DNA was found on envelopes with cash and gold bars in Menendez’s possession that have serial numbers that can be traced to Daibes, prosecutors have said.

Prosecutors yesterday said that Daibes also texted Menendez a picture of a gold bar, along with correspondence showing “hour by hour” and “minute by minute” how the alleged bribery scheme unfolded.

Attorneys for Menendez have said that the hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash found in his house were from regular bank withdrawals from the senator, which was not addressed by de Castro, Daibes’ lawyer.

De Castro described Daibes, a wealthy and prominent New Jersey developer, as someone who “loves gold.” The developer, he said, “invests in gold and tells others to do the same.” He also said that gold is culturally important in large parts of the world, and that “gold is even sold at Costco.”

Daibes “likes to gift gold,” he said. And there is nothing that connects the gold-gifting to an official act from Menendez — which he said would be “fatal” to the government’s case.

Hana, a New Jersey businessperson who went from a string of unsuccessful business ventures to running a lucrative monopoly on imported halal meat, is accused of bribing Menendez to boost his own business as well as aiding the government of Egypt — charges his attorney denied in opening statements.

Lustberg disputed prosecutors’ claims that Hana gave Nadine Menendez a “sham job” as a consultant at his halal certification company, IS EG Halal, to collect bribes. Nadine Menendez received three checks of $10,000 each before Hana “fired her,” Lustberg said, for poor performance.

“She didn’t work, … she wanted something for nothing,” Lustberg said of Nadine Menendez, adding that the funds were “not exactly exorbitant.”

Lustberg said that Hana had “connections” to Egyptian government officials — although he did not explain how — which helped get him the exclusive halal certification deal.

Lustberg also described the alleged acts Mennedez did on Hana’s behalf as constituent services.

When Menendez pushed back against a senior United States Department of Agriculture official who questioned Hana’s halal monopoly, Lustberg described it as a senator helping a constituent.

“It is what our congress people are supposed to do,” Lustberg said.