NJ Sen. Bob Menendez allegedly took Mercedes bribe after wife-to-be killed man in 2018 car crash: reports
Indicted New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez — accused of agreeing to meddle in a criminal probe in exchange for a new Mercedes-Benz — allegedly took the bribe after his soon-to-be wife killed a man during a traffic accident that left her car too banged up to drive.
Nadine Arslanian Menendez, 56, was the veteran Democrat’s on-again, off-again lover back when she slammed into Richard Koop, 49, as he crossed a road in Bogota, New Jersey at about 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 12, 2018, according to reports on Wednesday.
Local cops questioned Arslanian briefly, then cut her loose when they figured she was “not at fault,” reported The New York Times.
Menendez’s future wife told cops she didn’t see Koop — but she was driving her black Mercedes fast enough that the collision flung his mangled body to the curb, just steps from his own house.
Koop died almost instantly, the Times said. When his ex-wife went to identify his corpse, she could barely recognize him.
Arslanian’s luxury ride was trashed. She shattered her windshield, and the front end was badly damaged because she careened into a parked car after hitting the man, according to a Bogota police report.
In stepped her beau, the senior Democratic senator from the Garden State, with whom she was indicted last month for allegedly trading favors to help three New Jersey businessmen and the government of Egypt.
The feds allege that the 69-year-old Menendez — who married Arslanian in October 2020 — agreed to call a senior prosecutor at the New Jersey attorney general’s office and ask them to go easy on an associate of businessman Jose Uribe.
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In return, Uribe, a former insurance agent from Menendez’s hometown of Union City, allegedly agreed to finance a brand new Benz, the indictment states.
“All is GREAT! I’m so excited to get a car next week. !!” Arslanian texted Wael Hana — an equally shady Egyptian-American businessman from North Jersey who was also close with Uribe — a few days after Menendez’s alleged call.
By April 2019, she was signing the papers on a brand-new, $60,000 Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible, according to Manhattan federal prosecutors.
“Congratulations mon amour de la vie,” Arslanian texted Menendez, the indictment said. “We are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes.”
Both Uribe, 56, and Hana, 40, were indicted alongside Menendez and his wife last month, as was Fred Daibes, a well-known 66-year-old real estate developer and big-time fundraiser for the oft-embattled senator.
Federal prosecutors have said Menendez accepted hundreds of thousands in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, the Mercedes and even exercise machines during a four-year period, starting in 2018.
Both Menendez and his wife have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The car — and the accident that apparently necessitated it — were mentioned briefly in the September indictment. But this is the first time details about the crash have emerged.
Koop had spent the evening in nearby bars, the Times said, and an Uber had just dropped him off across the street from his apartment when Arslanian struck him.
Surveillance video from a nearby business showed Koop fly off Arslanian’s car after she hit him, then hit the brakes, the outlet said.
It doesn’t appear officers knew Arslanian was connected to one of the most powerful politicians in the state, the Times said.
But cops didn’t give her any tickets or summonses afterward.
“It is determined that at this time Ms. Arslanian was not at fault for the motor vehicle crash and that Mr. Koop was jaywalking,” a Bogota police sergeant wrote in his report the next day.
In an interview with the Times, her attorney, David Schertler, called the car crash a “tragic accident” and said it had nothing to do with the bribery charges.
“My understanding was this individual ran in front of her car, and she was not at fault,” Schertler said.
The victim’s family remains worried about the “very sparse, one-sided investigation,” according to his sister, Rosemarie Koop-Angelicola.
“Definitely a lack of legal enthusiasm to take this case, definite lack of media coverage, and a lack of communication by the authorities of Bergen County,” she told the Times. “We felt that the whole thing was very silently swept under the rug.”
Koop — a divorced father-of-one who was an avid fisherman and coach — had alcohol and marijuana in his system when he died, according to his autopsy.
But Arslanian was never even tested, Koop-Angelicola told the Times.
“The dead man was drug- and alcohol-tested, but the driver wasn’t,” Koop-Angelicola said. “Things like that just don’t play fair in our mind.”
Representatives of the Bogota Police Department and the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office did not return the outlet’s requests for comment.
