Menendez is in jail, but his foreign bribers are still cashing in. Why? | Opinion

by Tom Malinowski NJ.com

In New Jersey, we think of the fall of former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez as a story of old fashioned corruption — a politician taking gifts for favors.

For that crime, Menendez is now serving an 11 year prison sentence. And state officials have continued to pile on consequences, with Attorney General Matt Platkin filing a lawsuit to have it judicially confirmed that Menendez is “forever disqualified” from holding public office, and Assemblywoman Aura Dunn promoting a bill that would take away state pensions from former officials convicted of misconduct in office.

But there is an equally disturbing side of the story that’s gotten less attention, involving the people on the other side of the transaction.

As evidence in Menendez’s trial showed, the government of a foreign dictatorship — Egypt — and its willing partners in the United States used the former senator to gather intelligence on our country, and to change our government’s foreign policy, by easing restrictions on arms sales that were put in place because of Egypt’s imprisonment and torture of dissidents.

The trial also made clear that a New Jersey company – IS EG Halal based in Edgewater – played a vital role in parts of the corrupt scheme.

The Egyptian government in 2019 gave this company a monopoly for certifying food exported to Egypt as halal, apparently to create a source and channel of funds for bribing Menendez. Several of the bribes to him and his wife in 2019 and 2021 were reportedly paid out of the company’s checkbook.

So what has happened to the authors of this scheme?

After the Menendez indictment, Democrats in the U.S. Senate temporarily held up some U.S. aid to Egypt, but the current Republican-led Congress is moving to lift all restrictions on that aid — which would be even more than what the Egyptians hoped to get from bribing Menendez.

No Egyptian official has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for trying to corrupt our political system, though prosecutors and reporters identified some of them and the Treasury and State Departments have legal authority to freeze their assets and to ban them from entering the U.S..

The chief executive officer of the New Jersey company that channeled some of the bribes — Wael Hana (a man who responded to text message suggestions from an Egyptian intelligence official with the phrase “orders, consider it done”) — was convicted alongside Menendez. But the Justice Department did not charge the company itself, as might be expected in a case of corporate wrongdoing.

Rather than distancing itself from its convicted CEO, IS EG Halal released a statement after the trial that laid out his personal plans to challenge his verdict; stated he will remain “chief advisor” to the company; and promised there would be “no changes” to the company’s operations.

I’ve heard from reliable sources that the Egyptian government has been lobbying President Trump to pardon Hana, to signal that it will not leave its agents in the U.S. behind.

Meanwhile, Trump has gutted the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which prosecuted Menendez, stopped enforcing the law prohibiting Americans from bribing officials overseas, and openly invited foreign interests to buy cryptocurrency from companies that he owns.

So in sum: A bribed U.S. senator has been punished, but the bribers have mostly gotten off scot free, and Washington is surrendering the fight against this kind of corruption and malign foreign influence altogether.

That fight is normally the federal government’s responsibility. But in these extraordinary circumstances, state governments, including New Jersey, will have to step up.

The company that served as Egypt’s willing partner in bribing Menendez is still in our backyard, still benefiting from its unjustly acquired monopoly, still linked to a government that tried to buy influence in our country, and presumably still available for that purpose.

Much of IS EG Halal’s alleged conduct happened within New Jersey’s borders. We have state laws to prevent bribery in official matters and for racketeering. It would seem that the company could potentially be charged with violating either of these laws.

The state Legislature could demand answers from the company’s leaders about what they have done – if anything – to ensure that it will not be used to corrupt our elected representatives again. Those answers would be of interest beyond New Jersey too, since the company owns subsidiaries from Australia and New Zealand to Germany to Brazil.

The image of a senator’s stashed-away gold bars captured something shocking, and it’s good that Menendez will not be able to betray the public trust again.

But focusing only on him misses the broader problem of America’s vulnerability to corruption, which has grown exponentially since Trump’s election.

New Jersey should make clear that no interest, foreign or domestic, that is tied to our jurisdiction will be allowed to make that problem worse.