Four of the gold bars Sen. Robert Menendez stashed at his home were previously stolen from the businessman accused of bribing the New Jersey Democrat, according to a report.
The serial numbers on some of the gold found by the FBI during a June 2022 raid of Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs, NJ, home match identifiers that Fred Daibes reported to police after a 2013 armed robbery, according to NBC News.
Robbers made off with $500,000 in cash and 22 gold bars from Daibes’ Edgewater, NJ, home during the 2013 heist, the outlet reports.
Police later nabbed four suspects and recovered the stolen gold.
The matching serial numbers indicate that authorities have now directly linked at least some of the gold found in Menendez’s home to Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer and Menendez fundraiser.
Daibes has been accused of bribing the senator for a series of favors, including help in disrupting a federal prosecution against him.
“Each gold bar has its own serial number,” Daibes told investigators in 2014 when questioned about the stolen gold. “They’re all stamped … you’ll never see two stamped the same way.”
Daibes also signed “property release forms” to get the gold back, which certify the stolen goods belonged to him, according to the outlet.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged Menendez and his wife, Nadine, 56, with three conspiracy counts in connection with what prosecutors call a “corrupt bribery agreement” that benefited the couple, three New Jersey businessmen – Daibes, Wael Hana and Jose Uribe – and the government of Egypt.
Prosecutors allege that in March 2022 Daibes gave Nadine two gold bars that were a kilogram each – when at the time gold went for $60,000 per kilogram.
And Daibes’ driver’s fingerprints were later discovered on an envelope containing thousands of dollars in cash that was recovered from the couple’s home, according to the indictment.
