Tip on Menendez takes FBI to island

— A team of FBI agents has been conducting interviews in recent weeks in the Dominican Republic and the United States, looking into allegations that Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., patronized prostitutes in the Caribbean nation, but has found no evidence to support the claim, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

One person said agents have asked whether a Florida eye doctor - a close friend and major campaign donor to Menendez - provided the senator with prostitutes on vacations there. Another person said investigators are looking into allegations involving underage prostitutes and sex parties.

The two, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said FBI agents are following leads provided by an unknown tipster. In a series of e-mails with the FBI, the tipster alleged that the doctor, Salomon Melgen, had made prostitutes available to Menendez while he was staying at his friend’s resort home in the Dominican Republic. The tipster, in particular, mentioned young prostitutes and prostitution parties.

The FBI agents are also examining the role Menendez played in advocating for a port security contract in the Dominican Republic that would benefit Melgen, two people familiar with the case said.Menendez has urged U.S. officials to put pressure on the Dominican government to enforce the dormant contract, saying enhanced port security is important for interdicting drug traffic. Melgen is an investor in the company that holds the contract.

FBI spokesman Michael Leverock of the bureau’s field office in Miami declined to comment for this article.

Menendez has denied the prostitution allegations, calling them false “smears.”

A Menendez staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the senator’s efforts on behalf of the port deal were appropriate. “The senator has had a long history of advocating for increased port security across the world,” the aide said.

Melgen and his attorneys declined to comment for this article on any criminal investigation.

The relationship between Menendez and Melgen has come under scrutiny in recent weeks. Menendez acknowledged that he had failed to properly disclose two trips he took in 2010 on Melgen’s private plane to Melgen’s villa, near the resort of Casa de Campo. The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating the matter.

Separately, Melgen is under criminal investigation over allegations of Medicare fraud.

The FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General raided Melgen’s Palm Beach eye clinic Jan. 29, searching records and collecting boxes of documents. The raid came days after the tipster’s e-mail exchange with the FBI was posted anonymously on a website.

Melgen’s attorney, Kirk Ogrosky, said his client is cooperating with authorities in the Medicare investigation and declined to answer further questions.

In checking into the prostitution allegations, FBI agents are examining claims initially made in a series of letters thetipster wrote last spring to staff members at a government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, according to the two people familiar with their inquiries.

The claims were also carried on a conservative website, the Daily Caller.

The watchdog group’s executive director, Melanie Sloan, said her staff members could not get the tipster to agree to meet or speak on the telephone. As a result, Sloan told a Washington Post reporter last month, she had doubts about the credibility of the person’s claims. The FBI began looking into the tipster’s story after the group forwarded his information to the Justice Department and the FBI’s Washington field office in July.

The allegations in the letters included the names of a few women who purportedly had improper relations with Menendez and Melgen, including that of a Dominican teenager who told a local television station she had no involvement and had never left her village.

The Miami Herald reached another one of the women for an interview, and she explained that she worked for Melgen and considered him a generous person but did not elaborate. An attorney for the woman, Svitlana Buchyk, told a Post reporter Friday that the tipster’s claims about her are “absurd.”

“Ms. Buchyk is an actress and model attending to her career,” said her attorney, Gerald Greenberg.

Greenberg declined to discuss whether law-enforcement officials have interviewed his client.

In an e-mail to the tipster in September, FBI agent Regino Chavez wrote, “If you can give me ... information on all the young ladies who were victimized that would be helpful.” The agent repeatedly asked the tipster, who called himself Pete Williams and only corresponded by e-mail, to meet, but he declined.

Information for this article was contributed by Ernesto Londono and Alice Crites of The Washington Post.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 02/17/2013

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