New York — NEW YORK (AP) — A New Jersey businessman testified against the former Democratic Senator Bob Menendez And his wife in separate bribery trials will not go to prison, after the judge credited him in his sentencing Thursday for showing honesty before witnesses and sincere remorse.
Jose Uribe He was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Sidney Stein, who said he played a critical role in the convictions “in a major conspiracy involving other countries and corruption at the highest levels.”
Menendez, 71, resigned from the Senate after his resignation Belief Last year, he was charged with 16 charges, including working as a foreign agent for Egypt. He is serving an 11-year prison sentence. His wife, Nadine Menendez, was sentenced last month to four and a half years in prison.
Their trials included testimony about hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold bullion, cash and a Mercedes-Benz convertible being paid as bribes to the couple by three New Jersey businessmen, including Uribe, in exchange for actions the senator took on their behalf.
“I’m not going to lock you up. I think you’re very remorseful,” Stein said of Uribe, who was the government’s star witness in the Menendez trials.
Uribe was ordered to spend six months under house arrest, although he can leave home for work, education or religious reasons. The judge also ordered Uribe to forfeit $292,000 and pay $866,000 in compensation.
Businessmen Wael Hanna and Farid Daibes were also convicted in the bribery case. This year, Daibes, a real estate developer, was sentenced to seven years in prison, while Hanaa, an entrepreneur, was sentenced to eight years in prison.
At trial, Uribe testified that he made a $15,000 down payment in 2019 for the Mercedes and arranged monthly payments for the car from 2019 to 2022 in exchange for the senator’s help protecting his company from New Jersey criminal investigations of another trucking company.
Uribe apologized for his “horrible” crimes, saying he was “sorry and embarrassed.” He choked up as he apologized to his family.
“I will never break the law again,” he told Stein.
Assistant US Attorney Lara Pomerantz described Uribe’s cooperation as courageous and valuable, noting that “it is not usual for a cooperator to testify every day in the trial of a US Senator.”
She said it was “easy to imagine why people weren’t lining up to testify,” because everyone knew he was a particularly powerful senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he was criminally indicted in the fall of 2023. Menendez was forced out of office soon after.
She described the criminal investigation that preceded the trials as a “long-term investigation of rare and historic gravity,” and said some of the criminal conduct would have remained unknown without Uribe’s assistance.
Defense attorney Daniel Fetterman said his client was “actually harassed” as a result of his cooperation, citing a day in April 2024 when two strangers approached his wife outside a bank and asked inappropriate questions.
“It was terrifying for him and his wife,” he said, although he noted that Uribe’s cooperation continued unabated.