The Third Foreign Connection in Menendez’s Spiraling Scandal

The fast-expanding scandal around Sen. Bob Menendez has centered on his alleged interventions on behalf of the Egyptian and Qatari governments—which federal prosecutors claim he made in exchange for bribes, largely from a halal firm that Cairo granted exclusive rights to handle its meat supply. But an investigation by The Daily Beast points to the involvement of another businessman apart from the duo indicted alongside the senator in September, one linked to a third nation in whose internal and international intrigues the once-mighty Menendez dabbled: Albania.

The charges against the New Jersey Democrat and his wife, Nadine Arslanian, have ensnared two connected waterfront entrepreneurs: halal company head and accused Egyptian agent Wael Hana, and real estate mogul Fred Daibes, an investor in Hana’s ventures whom The Daily Beast exclusively reported last spring had received a $45 million infusion from a firm linked to Qatar’s royal family. Prosecutors have since claimed that this transaction represented part of a scheme by which the oil-rich state purchased the powers of Menendez’s office and of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship

A federal raid infamously uncovered incriminating envelopes of cash, gold bars, and assorted other valuables from the Menendezes’ home, which the Justice Department asserts constitute some of the proceeds of the elaborate bribery scheme—a scheme underwritten in part by the cash Hana’s company, IS EG Halal, amassed through its exclusive contract with the Egyptian regime.

Read more at The Daily Beast.