According to New York Post, the senator’s wife, Armenian-born Nadine Arslanian, sold $400,000 worth of gold bars last year, even though she had faced serious financial difficulties only three years previously. The gold bars were sold last spring, months before her husband, US Senator Bob Menendez, publicly acknowledged that he was facing a new federal investigation.
According to statements and information provided by the senator on his annual financial returns, Nadine Arslanian, 56, sold the gold between April 7, 2022 and June 16, 2022. This is equivalent to 13 pounds of pure gold. The sale was a remarkable financial turnaround for Arslanian, who had reportedly been struggling financially, even facing foreclosure on her home, before she married Menendez in 2020. Mere months after their relationship became official, the couple found itself at the center of an FBI investigation. Manhattan federal prosecutors are trying to determine whether the senator or his wife received unreported luxury gifts, including a car and a Washington apartment, in return for “political favors”.
The investigation is the second time Sen. Menendez has been probed by federal authorities over allegations of corruption. A long-running New Jersey state investigation ended in 2011 with no charges filed. Menendez, 69, was then indicted in 2015 after prosecutors from the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Unit accused him of accepting lavish bribes from Palm Beach ophthalmologist and political benefactor Dr. Salomon Melgen. Among the allegations was that the senator directed members of his staff to obtain visas for Melgen’s girlfriends from Brazil, Ukraine and the Dominican Republic.
Azerbaijani experts remind that the name of the pro-Armenian Senator Bob Menendez has occasionally featured in corruption and financial scandals before. The senator, who at every opportunity and at every level raised the Armenians’ baseless claims in exchange for large sums of “dirty money” he received from the Armenian diaspora, was found guilty of bribery and corruption.
The Bob Menendez scandal vividly demonstrates how critical the problem of the political system of Western countries. It was mentioned in the social network X by the Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan Hikmet Hajiyev, who said that there should be an investigation into pro-Armenian politicians in the United States and Europe.
Sharing an excerpt from the New York Post article about possible offenses by the US Senator Bob Menendez’s wife, Hajiyev reminded: “Money talks! All anti-Azerbaijani pro-Armenian lobbyists and politicians in the United States and Europe need to be further investigated.”
Lobbyism is not considered corruption or anything reprehensible per se in the USA. But Armenian lobbyists are too often involved in blatantly corrupt schemes. This is not only limited to the US. Suffice it to recall the Vice President of the European Parliament Eva Kaili, who is also known for her ties to the “Armenian lobby”: she was caught on a trivial bribe from the Qatari authorities. Before that, there was the biggest scam in the history of the UN around the Oil-for-Food program, used by Saddam Hussein to replenish his slush fund while under sanctions. Benon Sevan, an ethnic Armenian from Southern Cyprus, who led this project on the UN side, with the help of people like Charles Pasqua, the former French Interior Minister and a well-known Armenian lobbyist, set up a nice scheme: oil was sold to certain contacts at a low price, while food and medicines were bought at a high price. Part of the “mark-up” went to Saddam Hussein, and part to his European accomplices. The list goes on ad infinitum.
Finally, it is worth adding that the “Armenian lobby” itself has grown to its current size through financial injections from the Kremlin, where it was expected to be used and was used against Türkiye, who had joined NATO. One should not forget the confession of the defector Oleg Kalugin that since the seventies the foreign organizations of “Dashnaktsutyun” have been operating under the Kremlin’s control. Especially now, when persons with last names ending in “-yan” also sponsored trips of MEPs to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian Crimea.
And as long as Western law enforcement agencies do not see the forest for the trees and are in no hurry to launch an investigation against the entire system of political bribery called the “Armenian lobby”, the level of political corruption there is unlikely to go down in any meaningful way.
