Feds reveal case against Dominican eye doctor, Menendez: breitbart.com

Santo Domingo.- A United States federal grand jury in New Jersey is expected to return a bill of indictment on corruption charges against Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) within the next several weeks. According to media reports, prosecutors in the Department of Justice have presented the grand jury with compelling evidence that Menendez abused the power of his office to provide illegal help to his close friend, Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist born in the Dominican Republic, on several business matters involving the federal government in return for financial favors, breitbart.com reports

The outlet reports that spokesmen for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey both “said they could not confirm or deny the report,” the New Jersey Law Journal reported late Friday.

“Though lurid allegations that Melgen helped procure under-age prostitutes in the Dominican Republic for Menendez first captured headlines more than two years ago, it is the charges that Menendez used his position as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to intervene on Melgen’s behalf in these personal business matters that would appear to be at the center of the pending federal case against Menendez, .breitbart.com said.

The outlet says the government in the federal case against Menendez is “expected to focus on two specific instances of intervention, (1) Senator Menendez and his staff personally intervened in meetings with the former Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Marilyn Tavenner, and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to press the federal government to drop charges that Dr. Salomon Melgen had overbilled taxpayers for US$9 million of medical services.”

“(2) Through his staff, Senator Menendez asked the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service to drop plans to give the government of the Dominican Republic security scanning equipment for free that could be used at their ports of entry because such a donation would impede Dr. Melgen’s ability to pursue a legal case to enforce a controversial and lucrative, though still not yet implemented, contract a company under his control obtained with the government of the Dominican Republic more than a decade ago to be the sole provider of such equipment.”

B reitbart.com reports that details of these allegations surfaced last week when a document announcing a decision by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that one current aide and one former aide to Senator Menendez would not have to testify before the grand jury investigating these claims until a hearing was held surfaced briefly on the internet.

“According to the appeals court opinion, the case concerns two issues: a billing dispute that Melgen, a physician, had with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and Melgen’s exclusive deal to sell port screening equipment to the government of the Dominican Republic,” a reporter for the New Jersey Law Journal who saw the document before it was taken down, wrote.