The word “gold” appears 26 times in the federal indictment unsealed Friday against New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, along with his wife, Nadine, and three businessmen.
There are details of the senator’s Internet searches into the price of gold and Ms. Menendez’s visit to a jeweler to sell gold, and photos of the serial numbers stamped on some of the thirteen gold bars found in their home.
Yet gold is rarely mentioned in the financial disclosure forms he is required to file annually as a U.S. senator, which first appeared last year.
The three indictments — accusing the couple of taking bribes in exchange for Menendez’s willingness to use his influence as a powerful Democratic senator — raise questions about the accuracy of these disclosure forms.
Mr. Menendez, the indictment said, “failed to disclose the receipt of car payments or “any cash or gold bars” — in the “relevant calendar year.”
The 39-page indictment outlines a far-reaching web of political corruption, involving aid and arms sales to Egypt, and efforts by Mr. Menendez to convince state and federal prosecutors to go easy on his associates in criminal cases. The reporting errors that federal prosecutors in Manhattan noted on his financial disclosure forms in the Senate may seem to pale in comparison.
But they could also suggest an attempt to hide his new wealth to avoid the attention of the Senate Special Committee on Ethics.
That can also be a crime.
“Knowingly filing a false personal financial disclosure report may result in a civil penalty of up to $50,000,” Brett Kappel, a Washington-based attorney and expert on campaign finance, lobbying and government ethics, said in an email . “It could also be prosecuted as a violation of the False Statements Act – a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.”
The first mention of gold in Mr. Menendez’s financial disclosure report came in March 2022, on a report that was amended to indicate that his wife owned as much as $250,000 in gold bullion in 2020. The change made it appear that Ms. Menendez had owned the gold before or shortly after the couple married in October 2020.
But prosecutors believe she received at least some gold in 2021 or beyond; that acquisition does not appear in the senator’s disclosure reports.
Nadine Menendez, 56, was unemployed and struggling financially when she and Mr. Menendez started dating in early February 2018, according to court records, the indictment and several of her acquaintances.
Many of the text messages investigators found during a search of Ms. Menendez’s cell phone suggested she was desperate for money.
In July 2019, Wael Hana, a friend of Ms. Menendez who is also accused of bribery, gave her $23,000 to pay off mortgage debt and avoid losing her home to foreclosure, the indictment said. Prosecutors believe the payment was part of a broader bribery scheme. Several months later, she complained to Mr. Menendez that Mr. Hana had not made additional payments she had expected.
“I am sooooo angry,” she wrote, according to the complaint, adding that she thought the money would have arrived, but for “the second day in a row nothing has arrived.”
She asked the senator how she should proceed. “You are not allowed to text or email,” he replied.
She and Mr. Menendez were engaged to be married the following month during a trip to India, and they married a year later.
The items that prosecutors say constituted bribes continued to arrive in 2021 in the form of household items, including exercise equipment and air purifiers.
The first mention in the indictment of a transaction involving gold does not come until June 2021, when, prosecutors said, Mr. Hana purchased 22 one-ounce bars of gold bullion, two of which were found during a search of the home from the Menendezes in 2022. The gold purchase took place two days after a private meeting at a Washington hotel between the senator and an Egyptian official, the indictment said.
Eleven additional gold bricks were also discovered, with serial numbers traced back to a fundraiser for Mr. Menendez.
Mr. Menendez’s Senate disclosure forms show that he and Ms. Menendez had seven bank accounts between them. But investigators also found $550,000 in cash while searching a safe and the couple’s home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., some of it stuffed into ten envelopes and hidden in clothing and closets.
Mr. Menendez’s fingerprints were found on one of the envelopes, the complaint said.
Mr. Menendez said Friday that he was confident “that this matter will be successfully resolved once all the facts are presented.”
He presented himself as a victim of overzealous prosecutors and said he believed he had been repeatedly targeted by federal investigations because he is Latino.
He is expected to address the allegations at a news conference Monday morning in Union City, N.J., where he grew up and where he once served as mayor.
Ms. Menendez’s lawyer said she had broken no laws and planned to “vigorously contest these charges in court.”
Mr. Hana’s spokeswoman said the allegations are “absolutely baseless.”
Despite the apparent omissions in financial disclosure noted by prosecutors, it appears unlikely that the Senate Special Committee on Ethics will scrutinize Mr. Menendez’s files while a criminal prosecution is pending.
“Absent special circumstances,” the committee said in a statement Friday, “it is the committee’s long-standing policy to investigate matters where there is an active and ongoing criminal investigation or proceeding, so as not to become involved in that process to mix.”