NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez was sentenced yesterday to 11 years in prison for taking bribes including gold bars in exchange for favors for Egypt and New Jersey businessmen.
U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein imposed the sentence at a hearing in Manhattan federal court, following Menendez’s conviction last July.
The judge ordered Menendez to begin his prison term on June 6, allowing him to attend his wife Nadine Menendez’s corruption trial starting in March.
“You were successful, powerful. You stood at the apex of our political system,” Stein said at the sentencing. “I don’t know what led you to commit these crimes.”
Menendez, a once-powerful Democrat who represented New Jersey for 18-1/2 years in the Senate and chaired that body’s foreign relations committee, was found guilty in July on all 16 felony counts he faced, including bribery and fraud.
He was also found guilty of acting as a foreign agent, a first for a U.S. senator.
Menendez, 71, resigned from the Senate in August.