Jose Uribe, an insurance agent from Clifton, NJ, has been the star prosecution witness in the corruption trial of Sen. Robert Menendez — admitting during the proceedings he tried to bribe the senator and his wife with promises of up to a quarter-million dollars cash, a luxury convertible and a bottle of French brandy.
Uribe, 57, testified he brought Grand Marnier to a September 2019 meeting in the backyard of the Englewood Cliffs home that Menendez shared with now-wife Nadine Arslanian.
It took place a day before the Democratic senator was scheduled to meet with New Jersey’s Attorney General to allegedly try and quash a criminal case against two of Uribe’s friends that threatened to embroil his own insurance firm, according to testimony.
Part of the bribe to the senator included a new Mercedes for Arslanian, according to court records.
Co-indictee Wael Hana, who is on trial with Menendez, had initially promised Arslanian the convertible, but never delivered, Uribe said.
“She put a line of complaints about how her life is not going well,” Uribe testified. “Most men who promised her things in the past never come through.”
Little was known about the insurance executive and divorced father of four before he took the stand in Manhattan federal court.
Born in the Dominican Republic, Uribe said he moved to the US as an 18-year-old and worked in a factory before he began his insurance career.
Although he tried to portray himself as an upstanding family man in direct testimony, lawyers for Menendez and Hana suggested otherwise Tuesday, portraying Uribe as a serial fraudster who ripped off some of his insurance clients.
“You can’t even remember how many frauds you’ve committed, do you?” said lawyer Lawrence Lustberg, who represents Hana, an Egyptian-American entrepreneur who allegedly brokered a deal between Menendez and the Egyptian government.
Judge Sidney Stein denied a request to introduce evidence about Uribe’s missed child support payments, visits to strip clubs and credit card debt from 2010, according to Inner City Press.
Uribe, a co-defendant in the corruption case against Menendez, pleaded guilty in March and agreed to work with prosecutors against the embattled Democratic senator, who has been charged with multiple counts of bribery and corruption.
Among the accusations levied against him are conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Egypt and Qatar and accepting gold bars and more than $480,000 in cash that federal agents found at his home in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Menendez and his wife have vigorously denied the charges. Arslanian, who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer, is scheduled to appear in court in July for the beginning of her own trial for bribery and conspiring to act as a foreign agent.
Last Friday, Uribe told the packed courtroom that the bribery scheme began in early 2018 when his friend Hana overheard him talking about another pal, Elvis Parra, who owned a trucking company and had been indicted for insurance fraud.
Uribe’s own family firm had received subpoenas in the ever-widening case. Parra, who Uribe described as being almost like a brother to him, was facing prison time, he testified.
Hana pulled Uribe aside and told him that for between $200,000 and $250,000, Uribe could “make these things go away through Nadine and Senator Menendez,” Uribe testified.
According to Uribe, Hana told him he could go to Arslanian, who was then Menendez’s girlfriend, and she would get the senator to do his bidding.
Later, Uribe and Hana scheduled a meeting along with Parra and truck driver Bienvenido Hernandez, who ran Prestige Trucking Express and was also being probed, at a Teaneck Marriott Hotel lounge, Uribe testified.
“The deal is to kill and stop all investigation,” Uribe texted Hana after the meeting, according to court records.
In July 2018, Uribe held a fundraiser for Menendez in a private room at Villa Amalfi, an Italian restaurant in Cliffside Park, NJ. The event, which was attended by the senator and Arslanian, brought in $50,000 for his senate campaign. “I gave $5,000,” Uribe said in court.
As for Arslanian’s convertible, he said, “I said I would provide a car as soon as she helps me. I told her I will stand by my word, as soon as she delivers on her promise.”
Before she married Menendez in 2020, Arslanian had crashed her own Mercedes in a December 2018 accident in Bogota, NJ, that resulted in the death of a pedestrian.
“I agree[d] … to provide a car to Nadine to get the power and influence of Senator Menendez, for positive resolution for a colleague, and to stop and kill investigations,” Uribe said during his testimony.
Several months later when New Jersey state investigator Suzanna Lopez began subpoenaing Uribe’s son and daughter, who ran the insurance company with him, he began to get desperate, he said.
“I am f–d man,” Uribe texted Hana in October 2019, according to court records. “The whole thing is going bad. I have no face to talk to my family … Please be sure that your friend knows about this, just as a last favor.”
Uribe testified in court that “your friend” referred to Menendez.
Nearly a year after the text, on Aug. 7, 2019, Uribe said, he sat down with Arslanian and Menendez at Il Villaggio, another Italian restaurant in North Jersey. In court testimony on Monday, Uribe said that the senator had “complete knowledge” of what he was seeking at the dinner.
A month later, they met at Arslanian’s home in Englewood Cliffs, where Uribe brought the bottle of Grand Marnier and spoke to the senator, who smoked a cigar during the meeting, he said.
At an August 2020 dinner at the upscale Spanish restaurant Segovia in north Jersey, Uribe testified on Monday, Menendez told him: “I saved your ass, not once but twice.”
Uribe settled in Union City in 1985 just as Menendez was coming up as a young politician, becoming mayor in 1986. Uribe, who said he became a US citizen in 1991, worked in a factory and attended Hudson County Community College, deciding to work in insurance when he walked into a Union City broker’s office for the first time.
“I was insuring my used car and saw the place was busy so I asked to work there,” he told the court. “The first month, [my employer] didn’t pay me.”
When Judge Stein asked why he agreed to work for free, Uribe said: “I fell in love with the business.”
In 2011, Uribe pleaded guilty to insurance fraud in New Jersey and was ordered to pay $92,500 in fines. He was sentenced to three years of probation. His license was also revoked after he admitted to bilking seven clients of nearly $77,000 in insurance premiums which occurred between 2003 and 2010, according to a press release from the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.
A lawyer for Menendez did not return a request for comment.
