The fast-expanding scandal around Sen. Bob Menendez has centered on his alleged interventions on behalf of the Egyptian and Qatari governments—which federal prosecutors claim he made in exchange for bribes, largely from a halal firm that Cairo granted exclusive rights to handle its meat supply. But an investigation by The Daily Beast points to the involvement of another businessman apart from the duo indicted alongside the senator in September, one linked to a third nation in whose internal and international intrigues the once-mighty Menendez dabbled: Albania.
The charges against the New Jersey Democrat and his wife, Nadine Arslanian, have ensnared two connected waterfront entrepreneurs: halal company head and accused Egyptian agent Wael Hana, and real estate mogul Fred Daibes, an investor in Hana’s ventures whom The Daily Beast exclusively reported last spring had received a $45 million infusion from a firm linked to Qatar’s royal family. Prosecutors have since claimed that this transaction represented part of a scheme by which the oil-rich state purchased the powers of Menendez’s office and of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship
A federal raid infamously uncovered incriminating envelopes of cash, gold bars, and assorted other valuables from the Menendezes’ home, which the Justice Department asserts constitute some of the proceeds of the elaborate bribery scheme—a scheme underwritten in part by the cash Hana’s company, IS EG Halal, amassed through its exclusive contract with the Egyptian regime.
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“The IS EG Halal monopoly advanced the scheme by, among other things, providing a revenue stream from which Wael Hana, a/k/a ‘Will Hana,’ the defendant, could make good on the bribe payments he had promised to Robert Menendez, the defendant, through Nadine Menendez,” the indictment reads, noting that some of the funds passed through Strategic International Business Consultants, a firm belonging to the senator’s wife. “In total, IS EG Halal issued three $10,000 checks to Strategic International Business Consultants dated August 30, September 28, and November 5, 2019, which Daibes helped provide or facilitate.”
But The Daily Beast has found that IS EG and its dealings with Egyptian authorities involved another operator on New Jersey’s Manhattan-facing “Gold Coast”: Daibes’ longtime business partner Gazmend “Gus” Lita. What’s more, during the timeline of the alleged bribery scheme, Menendez coordinated with an Albanian-American advocacy group in which Lita was involved, met with the businessman’s brother—then a member of the Balkan state’s parliament—and repeated talking points favored by both, including in official statements.
These acts mirror some of those the feds say the senator took on behalf of Qatar, where Menendez allegedly made multiple positive statements about the country in exchange for bribes.
As The Daily Beast exclusively reported in Dec. 2022, Lita sat on the board of directors of IS EG Halal’s India-based affiliate, and operated business entities out of the same Edgewater, New Jersey, office suite Hana’s firm occupied. One of those companies, 4 Jersey Street Associates LLC, acquired property in a nearby town from the Egyptian Defense Ministry—the same Egyptian Defense Ministry that was allegedly relaying instructions to Hana and Menendez’s wife. The Daily Beast obtained public records showing Lita personally signed multiple documents related to the land deal.
In court documents related to his 2022 guilty plea to running a gambling den on behalf of the Albanian mob, Lita’s attorneys stated that their client—who had spent most of his career in the United States running various construction projects and a restaurant with Daibes—had most recently enjoyed a job as a “halal food inspector,” a role that required extensive international travel.
Neither Lita nor his most recent attorney on record responded to repeated email inquiries from The Daily Beast, and a relative who answered a phone registered in his name claimed Lita was out of the country and inaccessible by phone or messaging service.
In a 2023 filing related to his probation, Lita sought leave to travel to his native Albania to visit family. The businessman stated that he planned to stay with his brother, Korab Lita, a politician in Albania’s right-leaning Democratic Party.
The Daily Beast has discovered that in September 2019—that is, in the middle of the period in which Gazmend Lita’s employer IS EG Halal was allegedly cutting checks to Menendez’s wife—the senator held a meeting with Korab Lita, then a member of Albania’s parliament. The American lawmaker did not publicize the rendezvous, but his Albanian counterpart did.
Korab Lita emerged from the summit, which included another Albanian parliamentarian, claiming to have won Menendez’s endorsement for a suite of electoral reforms he and his party had advocated, and further asserting that the senator had urged Albanian voters to participate in upcoming elections. The support of a powerful American official would grant incredible clout to any figure in the small Balkan nation, in which U.S. attitudes hold enormous sway, and the meeting and its photos earned Korab Lita multiple news articles in his home country.
“Without a real Electoral Reform, which will bring Free and Fair Elections, DEMOCRACY is an Illusion, he said,” Korab Lita wrote in a Facebook post, in what he claimed was a paraphrase of the senator’s remarks. “On his part, the Senator, although he was sufficiently informed about the situation in Albania, highly appreciated our initiative to represent citizens in Parliament and to take further Reforms blocked for a long time, and added that representation and not Boycott serve Democracy. The Senator also initiated, and through us made an APPEAL to the Albanian Political Class, and stressed that the KEY to a healthy democracy and the foundation of a legal state for citizens is the FREE VOTE.”
Lita’s colleague from Tirana backed up his account of the encounter almost to the word.
Menendez’s team did not respond to repeated queries from The Daily Beast regarding this meeting, his relationship with the Litas, or his subsequent advocacy and official acts around Albania and the Balkans.
In 2021, during the period in which Gazmend Lita was setting up companies in IS EG Halal’s offices and inking a property transaction with the Egyptian government, and while Wael Hana was allegedly converting IS EG funds into gold bars and gifts for the Menendezes, the senator issued a joint statement with his Republican counterpart atop the Foreign Relations Committee echoing Korab Lita’s calls for voter participation and concerns about electoral integrity. The release also contained what appears to be a veiled warning to Albania’s reigning Socialist Party, the chief rivals of Korab Lita’s Albanian Democratic Party.
“We encourage the Albanian people to vote. We urge authorities to ensure that voters are able to exercise this fundamental right free from intimidation and violence,” Menendez wrote with Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho). “We also expect all candidates to act in accordance with democratic norms even as they campaign vigorously. Albania’s friends in America are more committed than ever to supporting a democratic and prosperous future for the Albanian people.”
It would be only one of several statements Menendez would make that seemingly aligned him with the Lita clan, and with Albanian interests more broadly. And Gazmend Lita’s brother in the Albanian parliament was not his only political associate with whom Menendez became involved.
Like Daibes and Hana, Lita and U.S.-based members of his family have donated substantially to Menendez’s electoral operation over the past decade and a half. But in Lita’s case, many of those donations have passed through the Albanian-American Political Affairs Committee, of which Menendez and his New Millennium PAC have been the largest beneficiaries in recent years, racking up multiple max-out $5,000 donations beginning in 2021.
The Albanian-American Public Affairs Committee is an arm of the nonprofit Albanian-American Civic League, headed by former New York Rep. Joe Dioguardi and his wife Shirley Cloyes. The Civic League’s website lists Lita as a member of the organization’s board. In a letter to the judge in the betting parlor affair, Dioguardi highlighted that for two decades Lita had “given his time and financial support” to the League and its PAC, and “hosted each year at his expense many meetings” at the restaurant he ran with Daibes, the co-defendant in the Menendez case.
The Civic League did not respond to repeated phone and email inquiries. The Daily Beast briefly contacted Dioguardi, but the ex-lawmaker seemed to hang up immediately when this reporter identified himself, and did not reply to a subsequent call and text message.
In court documents, Lita’s lawyer referenced his work with the League in the past tense, but the group continued to list Lita as a board member on social media through mid-2023. As Dioguardi noted, the organizations’ central purpose is to lobby U.S. government officials on matters relevant to ethnic Albanians living in Southeast Europe—particularly those of Kosovo, a majority Albanian state that declared independence from Serbia in 2008 following years of violence and ethnic cleansing efforts initiated by Belgrade.
Beginning in the final quarter of 2019, Cloyes and Dioguardi for the first time began reporting meetings with Menendez and his staff, congressional lobbying records show. He and his committee swiftly became the primary focus of their efforts, as the League pressed for a hearing on Serbia’s abiding refusal to recognize Kosovan independence, and on the U.S.’s efforts to mediate the dispute and to persuade more allies to recognize Kosovo as a separate nation.
“Shirley made a presentation about the need for a full Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the resolution of the Serbia-Kosova conflict. She cited the importance of Prishtina and Belgrade sitting down at the negotiating table only after Belgrade recognizes the independence of Kosova, a position that Senator Menendez supports,” the pair wrote in one disclosure.
Almost a full day after deadline, Cloyes sent a statement to The Daily Beast that did not substantively engage with the list of questions sent regarding the Civic League's relationship with the senator, and about whether Gazmend Lita had ever facilitated that relationship. Nor did she speak to inquiries about whether the Civic League or its members had had contact with investigators or prosecutors working on the senator's case. Rather, Cloyes disputed The Daily Beast's finding that the organization had begun engaging with Menendez in 2019, insisting that they made contact only after his ascent to the Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship in 2021.
However, the Civic League's own lobbying disclosures for the final quarter of 2019 belie this claim.
Cloyes further asserted that Gazmend Lita had abdicated his board position with the group due to "negative press," but she did not respond to subsequent questions about when this exit occurred, or whether he had given the Civic League any recent financial support. She maintained, however, that the organization had remained utterly aloof both from dealings in the Garden State, and from domestic Albanian affairs, and had lobbied only around Kosovo—one of Tirana's chief geopolitical concerns.
"The Albanian American Civic League, founding President Joe DioGuardi, and I, the Civic League’s Balkan Affairs Adviser, have never been involved with Senator Robert Menendez in any of his activities in New Jersey or with his constituents there," Cloyes wrote. "The Albanian-American Civic League has never reported to Chairman Menendez and his staff about Albania, because the Civic League’s focus is Kosova."
In early 2020, Menendez began to grow more vocal on the Kosovo issue, joining his then-House counterpart Rep. Eliot Engel of New York in signing a letter to Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, urging sanctions on Serbia and attacking the Republican administration’s “heavy-handed” tactics in pushing Kosovo toward negotiations.
On Aug. 15, 2021, Menendez used the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Twitter account to praise Albania for accepting refugees from Afghanistan.
“I welcome the Albanian government’s decision to give temporary safe haven to those fleeing the Taliban onslaught in Afghanistan. The people of Albania are once again showing the world what ‘BESA’ means.” the senator wrote, referring to the country’s traditional code of honor. “You have our respect and thanks.”
Five days later, the senator issued a press release similarly lauding Qatar for its work on behalf of Afghan refugees, which the feds now allege was part of a pattern of favorable actions Menendez took on behalf of that nation.
The next month, the senator and his wife attended the first of several meetings of the Civic League, where Cloyes specifically urged him to persuade Greece to recognize Kosovo’s independence. In his address to the group, the senator attacked Serbia’s treatment of its remaining Albanian minority, called Kosovo “one of the closest allies” to the United States, and attacked plans to establish an Association of Serb Municipalities, which would grant Serb-majority areas inAlbania a degree of autonomy.
“The last thing I think we should be doing is establishing enclaves as suggested by the Association of Serbian Municipalities. That is a recipe for disaster,” the senator said to overwhelming applause.
The senator and his wife were back at the Civic League only a few months later, in January 2022. At the top of his remarks, Menendez mentioned he would need to shortly board a train to meet in D.C. with the emir of Qatar—before he again laid into Serbia.
“The United States has tried to take a neutral approach in normalization talks between Kosovo and Serbia, when Serbia is disproportionately responsible for the current lack of talks,” he said.
“Congress has to continue the work to ensure the rights of Albanians, particularly in the Presheva Valley [of Serbia], and I have pushed the State Department to increase its engagement on this front.”
The following month, at a subcommittee hearing on the Western Balkans—which Menendez had told the Civic League the previous fall was a step toward its desired full committee hearing, and which the League shared on its YouTube page—the senator pressed the Biden administration’s point man on the region. He again denounced the Association of Serb Municipalities’ plan and slammed Serbia’s “reticence to recognize Kosovo's sovereignty,” as well as its authoritarian leader Aleksandar Vučić.
That spring, Menendez hosted Kosovo’s president and prime minister, and in the fall again addressed the Civic League, where Cloyes lauded him for his adamant stances on Albanian priorities in the Balkans. Again, the senator’s wife and now-co-defendant accompanied him.
“You’re the only Western leader anywhere that I know of who’s opposed Serbia’s role historically and is willing to say we should not create the Association of Serb Municipalities, because it will completely chop up Kosovo,” Cloyes said, even as she continued to urge him to hold a full Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the issue. “You’re the only person also to say, we must have Serbia come to the table.”
After attending yet another Civic League gathering in February 2023, which coincided with another visit with Kosovo’s prime minister, Menendez held the full committee hearing on the Western Balkans that May. As it happens, May was the month in which the feds claim Menendez received his final bribe from the Qataris who had invested with Lita’s partner Daibes.
The senator again lambasted Serbia, describing how he had “personally heard from Albanian leaders” about the country’s mistreatment of minorities, and blaming it for recent flare-ups in the region. He also once more assailed the plan for the Association of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo, and complained of “little to no pressure on Belgrade” from the State Department.
His sole critique not leveled at Serbia he aimed at Albanian authorities’ jailing of an ethnic Greek candidate aligned with Korab Lita’s Democratic Party, a comment that echoed insinuations Albanian Democratic Party leadership had made only days before about the incumbent Socialist government’s motives for the arrest.
In the same comment, Menendez admitted he had pushed Athens to recognize Kosovo, as the Civic League had urged, and worried the sudden detention could undercut his efforts.
“I am concerned about Albanian police arresting a Greek national, Dionysis-Fredi Beleri, two days before the election—two days before the election,” Menendez said. “I’ve been advocating with the Hellenic Republic for Kosovo and others, but this exacerbates. In my mind, I always question when something happens two days before an election.”
A subsequent disclosure by the Civic League revealed that it had provided “extensive materials to the senior staff during the months preceding the hearing.” Menendez’s convening of the hearing, and his performance, earned him plaudits from Kosovo’s president.
But not all foreign leaders were pleased with the proceedings, or with Menendez’s subsequent signing of an international letter protesting “Belgrade-centered policy for the Balkans.” Shortly after Menendez’s indictment in September, Serbia’s Vučić—who has his own criminal links—claimed the scandal had to involve his Balkan rivals.
“We are talking about a man who is the most powerful Albanian lobbyist. There is no one who was worse towards Serbia, who did a dirtier job than Bob Menendez,” Vučić told reporters, lamenting Menendez’s efforts to encourage neighboring states to recognize Kosovo. “It is clear that he was paid by the Albanians.”
Albania’s fractious factions have repeatedly sought to sway American policy in recent years. The most scandalous case to date was the Socialist government’s recruitment of FBI counterintelligence official Charles McGonigal, who pleaded guilty to accepting a $225,000 gift from an associate of Tirana’s clandestine services last fall. However, the Albanian Democratic Party engaged in a simultaneous lobbying effort, which may have received financial support from Moscow.
The Daily Beast’s discoveries provoked concern among good government advocates, who fretted about the senator’s continued receipt of highly confidential information relevant to national security and American interests abroad.
“This adds to the concern that Menendez is far too ethically compromised to serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” said Nick Schwellenbach, senior investigator at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.
Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, agreed—and re-upped his organization’s call for Menendez to give up his seat in the Senate.
“The more we learn, the worse the Menendez situation becomes. We now have to question so many of his foreign policy actions,” Libowitz wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast. “This is not a person who should be getting access to classified briefings. Menendez needs to do the right thing and resign from the Senate.”
