The federal corruption case against Senator Bob Menendez, his wife, and a trio of New Jersey businessmen has been filled with wildly shady, cartoonishly dark details from the start, from an indictment alleging hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold bars and cash “stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe” to reports that the Mercedes-Benz Nadine Menendez received as part of the alleged bribery scheme was a replacement for a car she struck and killed a man with. (She was not charged with any crime resulting from the accident.) And yet, somehow, the story has since gotten shadier.
The most recent revelations concern Wael Hana, one of the businessmen charged alongside the Menendezes. All defendants have all pleaded not guilty. (Prosecutors allege Hana bribed the couple in exchange for Menendez’s pledge to take actions that benefited Egypt, including ensuring military aid continued to flow to the nation.) According to a report from The Washington Post, Hana, who moved to the US from Egypt in 2006, had extensive ties to the Egyptian government, which “entrusted [him] with…responsibility and power, enriching him even as business associates and government officials around the world found the arrangements mysterious.” For instance, in 2015, according to the Post, Egypt’s Defense Ministry had asked Hana to help arrange transport of US military helicopters worth about $40 million a piece from Florida to the North African nation, even though he apparently had no background in shipping military cargo. “I don’t know how he got involved with shipping aid for the Egyptian military,” said Essam Youssef, a former Hana associate who told the Post he helped arrange the shipment. “It was strange. The way he was coming to me, he didn’t have a clue about shipping. But it was clear the Egyptian government trusted him.”
Other curious details, according to the outlet, include:
- After Hana started to help introduce the senator to Egyptian officials, “Egypt granted a lucrative monopoly to one of the companies Hana had started, suddenly making him a player in international trade.”
- The company, called IS EG Halal Certified, “was given sole responsibility for certifying that halal meat exported to Egypt was processed according to Islamic law, rankling the global beef industry.” (Separately, prosecutors claim that the company was used to pay bribes to Menendez and his wife.)
- In 2021, Egypt expanded IS EG Halal’s monopoly to include “all imported halal food and beverages, including dairy products,” a decision that “confounded other countries.”
- In late 2021, a US official said that “certification fees for halal meat exported to Egypt from the United States had gone up by 1,000% since the Egyptian government had given Hana-owned IS EG a monopoly,” and whispers among diplomats began to circulate that the arrangement between Egypt and Hana looked very much like a front for Egyptian intelligence.
“It would have been impossible to carry out such an operation, changing the whole system in an inefficient manner, without it being part of the security system in Egypt or being protected by it,” a Western diplomat told the Post. According to the outlet, on top of the criminal charges, authorities in the US are investigating Hana as part of a counterintelligence probe.
In a statement, a lawyer for Hana said, “Wael Hana’s background is a classic immigrant story, having come to the US through the lottery system as a 22-year-old in 2006. Since then, he has been an entrepreneur who has built several businesses, and he has always acted ethically and legally. Mr. Hana is innocent and has nothing to hide.” The attorney added that Hana has been cooperating with the investigation.
Menendez, who has faced deafening calls by his colleagues in the Senate to resign, has thus far refused to do so.
Bess Levin
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