U.S. Senator Bob Menendez from New Jersey, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a prominent critic of the Ethiopian government, is now facing allegations of political corruption. The senator was indicted Friday on allegations that he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in cash, gold bars, a luxury car and mortgage payments in exchange for using his position to benefit the Egyptian government, according to the prosecutors. He was charged alongside his wife, Nadine Menendez, and three other businesspeople, Politico reported.

According to the indictment, after Menendez began dating Nadine, she and Hana—a New Jersey businessman she’d known previously—“worked to introduce Egyptian intelligence and military officials to” the senator “for the purpose of establishing and solidifying a corrupt agreement in which Hana” and others “provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes to [the couple], in exchange for” Menendez’s efforts to help the Egyptian government.

Menendez did that, the indictment says, in part by supporting US arms sales to Egypt, despite objections by some policymakers to the autocratic government and poor human rights record of Egyptian President Abdel el-Sisi.

Prosecutors say that in 2018, Menendez told Hana he was about to sign off on the US providing military aid to Egypt. Hana allegedly passed the information on to an Egyptian government official. The DOJ also says Menendez gave Egypt highly sensitive information on people working for the US embassy in Cairo. Menendez also allegedly helped an Egyptian official lobby the Senate to drop objections to sending $300 million in aid to Egypt. 

As part of the scheme, Menendez allegedly used his office to help Hana protect a monopoly on certifying US-produced halal meat exports to Egypt as compliant with Islamic standards. Hana, despite having no previous experience in halal certification, secured the monopoly under murky circumstances in 2019. When the US Department of Agriculture objected to the arrangement, which prosecutors say drove up prices for some US meat suppliers, Menendez allegedly pressured a high-level USDA official in an effort to get that agency to drop its objection.

In the 39-page court filing, multiple meetings between Senator Menendez and Egyptian officials are outlined. Among them is a meeting in 2020 regarding negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan concerning a dam Ethiopia was building on the Nile River. It’s alleged Senator Menendez subsequently wrote to secretaries of treasury and state, advocating for increased State Department engagement in the issue.

While in the Senate, Senator Menendez gained a reputation for his strong stance on foreign policy. He has been outspoken in his criticism of the Ethiopian federal government during the conflict in the Tigray region. He has urged the Biden administration to vote against providing assistance from international financial institutions that would be directed toward the Ethiopian government.

This marks the second round of corruption charges brought against Menendez by the Justice Department in a decade. In 2015, he faced indictment on charges that he used his political influence to assist a Miami doctor who lavished him with campaign donations, as reported by USA Today.