US Senator Menendez helped businessman with Qatar investment, prosecutors say

US Senator Bob Menendez helped a New Jersey businessman seek an investment from a Qatari company with ties to the Middle Eastern country’s government, prosecutors said yesterday in a new indictment against the Democratic lawmaker, Reuters reports.

Menendez in September pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent for the Egyptian government and accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from New Jersey businessmen in exchange for interfering with law enforcement probes into them.

In yesterday’s superseding indictment, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said Menendez introduced businessman Fred Daibes to a member of the Qatari royal family to negotiate a multimillion-dollar investment into a real estate project. Daibes was indicted alongside Menendez and has pleaded not guilty.

Menendez’s trial is set for May 6.

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