The flashy Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible Democratic New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez’s wife reportedly received as part of a bribery scheme alleged in a federal indictment was gifted to her by donors after her previous vehicle was totaled in a 2018 fatal pedestrian accident, the Washington Post reports.
Text messages show that in the weeks after the accident, Nadine Arslanian, Menendez’s then-girlfriend, texted about how inconvenient her life had become without a car of her own to co-defendant Wael Hana, an Egyptian-born New Jersey businessman–presumably a non-organized crime “businessman” but a corrupt New Jersey businessman nonetheless. A few weeks later, a different co-defendant named Jose Aribe gave Arslanian $15,000 in cash, which she used to make a downpayment on the car. Aribe then took over the monthly payment on the loan for the balance of the $60,000 cost.