Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
Sen. Bob Menendez’s wife, indicted alongside him last month in a sprawling corruption case, was on the payroll of a medical lab that drew down more than $10 million in federal COVID-19 funding—a company, like the firms at the center of the federal charges, with ties to Egypt.
Nadine Arslanian Menendez faces allegations that she received bribe payments from multiple New Jersey businessmen to influence her husband on behalf of the regime of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, among other crimes. The Justice Department alleges that some illicit payments flowed to Strategic International Business Consultants, a limited liability company she reportedly established for this purpose.
But on his 2021 and 2022 personal financial disclosures, the New Jersey Democrat reported his bride had two sources of income: Not just Strategic International Business Consultants, but another Garden State entity, Fusion Diagnostics Laboratories. The reports show her arrangement with this medical testing facility started some time after her October 2020 marriage to the senator—but coincided with the period in which the company siphoned in massive sums the federal government allocated to deal with the pandemic.