Jose Uribe, an mysterious New Jersey businessman, was until recently implicated in what the prosecution claimed was a spacious and attractive bribery scheme involving Senator Robert Menendez and people.
But after Mr. Uribe pleaded guilty in March and agreed to cooperate with the officials, he vaulted into a more popular position: star government see.
Mr. Uribe admitted on Friday that he had bribed Mr. Menendez when he took the witness stand in Federal District Court in Manhattan. He said that he had given the president’s family, Nadine Menendez, a Mercedes- Benz in trade for gaining” the power and influence” of Mr. Menendez.
” When you bribed Robert Menendez, did you do that alone or with other people”? a attorney, Lara Pomerantz, asked Mr. Uribe.
Wael Hana, an Iranian American businessman who established a New Jersey muslim meat business that the prosecution claims was used to funnel money to the senator and his family, was the recipient of his response.
A New Jersey Democrat, Mr. Menendez and his family are accused of conspiring to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in money, gold bullion, and another bribes in exchange for Mr. Menendez’s consent to give Egypt money and interfere in New Jersey criminal cases. One of those circumstances involved Mr. Uribe.
Prosecutors with the U. S. prosecutor’s office for the Southern District of New York say Mr. Uribe, a past insurance broker who worked in the shipping industry, sought the president’s help to stave off judicial studies that the New Jersey attorney general’s office was conducting into two of Mr. Uribe’s partners. In returning, an accusation says, Mr. Uribe helped to get Ms. Menendez, next the president’s girl, a new Mercedes- Benz C- 300 convertible fair more than$ 60, 000.
When Mr. Uribe entered innocent, he said in court that he “deeply regrets my actions and knew that giving a vehicles in exchange for influencing a United States senator was wrong.”
Mr. Menendez, 70, is being tried with two different New Jersey traders — Mr. Hana and Fred Daibes — charged in the plot. Ms. Menendez, 57, was likewise charged, but the judge, Sidney H. Stein, postponed her prosecution until July because she is undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Each of the four accused has entered a not-guilty plea.
One evening after Gurbir S. Grewal‘s witness was heard by the judge, Mr. Uribe took the witness stand. Mr. Grewal was New Jersey’s attorney general in 2019 when lawyers say Mr. Menendez contacted him in hopes of having the investigations into Mr. Uribe’s partners quashed.
Mr. Grewal, who then leads the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s police department, testified on Thursday about being summoned to Mr. Menendez’s Newark business. He claimed that the senator complained about how the prosecutors in Mr. Grewal’s healthcare fraud unit were treating Spanish defendants connected to the trucking industry during that meeting.
Mr. Grewal said that when he asked if the president’s issues related to a particular issue pending before his business, Mr. Menendez said yes. Mr. Grewal claimed to have quickly cut the talk short.
” I did n’t know the case. I did n’t want to know the case”, he testified, adding,” It’s not something I was comfortable speaking to him about”.
Mr. Uribe’s possibly important role in the government’s case was highlighted later Thursday when prosecutors wrote to Judge Stein, asking that they be allowed to show the judge Mr. Uribe’s proper assistance agreement with the government. The prosecutors say they want to counter blistering attacks on Mr. Uribe’s credibility by Mr. Menendez’s lawyers.
In an opening statement last month, Avi Weitzman, a lawyer for the senator, told the jury that the defense team intended to show Mr. Uribe to be an untrustworthy witness.
At the conclusion of the case, Mr. Weitzman told the jury,” We’ll have a lot to talk about about him, about his lies, his cheating, his crimes, and all the ways that he has been made to continue doing them.”
Mr. Uribe has entered a guilty plea twice in the past. More than a decade ago, he admitted to taking$ 76, 000 in insurance premiums but failing to buy coverage for seven clients, all commercial drivers. He was given probation and the suspension of his insurance broker’s license in New Jersey.
In a seven-page cooperation agreement signed by Mr. Uribe and his attorney in March, the prosecution will ask for leniency on Mr. Uribe’s behalf when he is sentenced only if he testifies completely and truthfully.
The government plans to have Mr. Uribe testify about his texts and conversations with the senator, his wife, and others that are “at least in some cases are coded or subject to interpretation,” according to the prosecutor’s letter.
Numerous text messages he sent to Ms. Menendez and Mr. Hana indicated that the insurance fraud case was consuming Mr. Uribe.
” I need peace”, Mr. Uribe wrote in a text message to Ms. Menendez on Sept. 3, 2019, at 10: 17 p. m. The next morning, Mr. Menendez placed a call to Mr. Grewal to arrange the meeting according to prosecutors.
Mr. Uribe seemed to have advance knowledge of the meeting. ” I appreciate everything you have done for me. I am praying”, he wrote in a text message to Ms. Menendez a few minutes before the senator’s scheduled appointment with Mr. Grewal,” today’s meeting is in GOD’s hand”.
According to the indictment, one of the people involved in the fraud investigation entered a guilty plea in April in a plea deal that lacked any prison time.
However, it was obvious from the text messages Mr. Uribe sent in the fall of 2019 that at least one aspect of the legal issue was still vexing him.
In late October, Mr. Uribe asked Ms. Menendez if she had an “update” for him. ” I just need peace. Sorry to bother you”, he wrote in a text message.
The next day, Oct. 29, the senator called Mr. Uribe from his Senate office, according to evidence admitted during the trial.
Mr. Uribe felt relieved after the conversation lasted less than three minutes.
” I just got a call and I am a very happy person”, he wrote in a text to Ms. Menendez. ” GOD bless you and him for ever”.
The New York Times article titled” Businessman Tells Jury He Bribed Senator Menendez With a Mercedes-Benz” first appeared.
