Uribe, a New Jersey insurance coverage and trucking govt, spent a 3rd day on the witness stand in Menendez’s corruption trial, his credibility assailed throughout cross-examination by Payment and the legal professional for one of many senator’s co-defendants.
A crucial hyperlink within the authorities’s case, Uribe had beforehand testified to bribing Menendez by his then girlfriend, now spouse starting in 2019. His a part of the deal, he testified, was offering Nadine Arslanian with a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Within the trial’s most heated cross-examination, Payment pressed Uribe on different chapters of his life, particularly the lies he’d already admitted to the jury in regards to the insurance coverage brokerage in New Jersey that he secretly ran for greater than a decade regardless of being banned from possession.
“You advised lies for all of these 13 years, appropriate?” Payment requested.
“You didn’t pay a greenback in company taxes since 2011 by at the least 2022, appropriate?” he added later.
The choose sustained a number of objections to Payment’s questions. However jurors have been paying shut consideration, turning their heads backwards and forwards as protection attorneys grilled Uribe for hours about his previous crimes and interactions with Menendez and co-defendant Wael “Will” Hana, one other New Jersey businessman.
Uribe, 57, pleaded responsible greater than a decade in the past in a New Jersey state court docket to insurance coverage fraud and theft by deception. This 12 months he pleaded responsible to seven federal expenses, together with a conspiracy to bribe Menendez, wire fraud and obstruction of justice, in addition to a tax evasion depend unrelated to the lawmaker’s case.
He faces as much as 95 years in jail. His sentencing is ready for Friday, however the date may very well be rescheduled.
As the one witness anticipated to testify that Menendez and Arslanian agreed to a corrupt alternate — the Mercedes in alternate for the senator utilizing his affect to quash legal investigations in New Jersey — Uribe’s credibility is bound to be a central query in jury deliberations.
A protection legal professional for Hana, Ricardo Solano, spent hours exhibiting information to Uribe about occasions that he mentioned he couldn’t keep in mind. He couldn’t keep in mind being advised by attorneys for a enterprise affiliate of his, Elvis Parra, whose legal investigation Uribe was asking Menendez to quash, that Parra would possibly blame Uribe at trial. He couldn’t keep in mind making inquiries to a different particular person about shopping for a $500,000 residence in 2019 and 2020.
And Uribe blanked when requested whether or not a New Jersey administrative regulation choose as soon as discovered that he had not been truthful underneath oath at a listening to on whether or not to reinstate his insurance coverage license after his state convictions.
Uribe additionally mentioned he filed fraudulent paperwork with the Small Enterprise Administration and a federal catastrophe restoration program meant to assist companies keep afloat through the financial ravages of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Your crimes usually contain mendacity to others. Is that appropriate?” Solano requested.
“Sure, I did,” Uribe mentioned.
“When your loved ones is in hassle, there’s nothing you wouldn’t say to guard them,” the legal professional mentioned.
“I’ve lied previously to guard my household, sure,” he responded.
Uribe had testified Monday that Menendez was effectively conscious of the corrupt settlement he had reached with Arslanian and that the senator actively participated within the scheme. In response to Uribe, he and Menendez had a late-night assembly at Arslanian’s residence in 2019 wherein the businessman offered the names of a number of associates going through investigations that he wished Menendez to disrupt. They met a number of extra occasions to debate plans and updates, Uribe testified.
“I saved your ass twice, not as soon as however twice,” Uribe recalled Menendez telling him in 2020 at a restaurant in Bergen County, N.J.
“That factor you requested me about, it’s nothing there. I offer you your peace,” Uribe mentioned Menendez advised him over the cellphone on one other event.
Uribe insisted that he wished Menendez to cease a state insurance coverage fraud probe into an worker he thought-about to be like a daughter as a result of he wished to guard her and different associates — not himself. Solano identified that the worker was the face of Phoenix Danger Administration, the corporate Uribe was operating in secret after his 2011 convictions, and that he had an incentive to guard himself.
Menendez, 70, is charged with 16 felony counts, together with bribery, extortion, wire fraud, performing as a international agent for Egypt and obstruction of justice. He may very well be disqualified from holding public workplace and sentenced to a long time in jail if convicted on all counts.
His spouse’s trial is scheduled for subsequent month.
