EX-MEXICAN OFFICIAL A SUSPECTED SUICIDE

Former Drug Prosecutor Dead In N.J.

MEXICO CITY -- One month after being charged in the United States with
laundering $9.9 million in suspected drug payoffs, Mexico's former top drug
prosecutor was found dead in his New Jersey apartment Wednesday of an
apparent drug overdose. His lawyer said it was suicide.

Mario Ruiz Massieu, 48, had been under house arrest since 1996 while
battling extradition to Mexico, where he was accused of covering up the
1994 murder of his brother, ruling party leader Jose Francisco.

Ruiz Massieu was also charged in Houston last month with laundering
millions while he was assistant attorney general. He was scheduled to be
arraigned in Houston on Friday morning.

Justice Department spokesman John Russell said in Washington that Ruiz
Massieu was found by Palisades Park, N.J., police, with his death due to an
apparent overdose of antidepressants.

Mexican justice officials and Ruiz Massieu's sister Marisela also confirmed
his death.

Bergen County prosecutors said police were called to the apartment by Ruiz
Massieu's wife, who said she found him on the bedroom floor. He was wearing
his electronic monitoring anklet.

Assistant prosecutor James V. Santulli said police found no evidence of
violence or forced entry and until an autopsy is conducted Thursday,
authorities were treating the death as an apparent suicide.

Ruiz Massieu had argued that he faced political persecution if he was
returned to Mexico and had fended off four extradition requests in New
Jersey courts.

His lawyer said the money-laundering charges may have been too much for him
to bear.

"Unfortunately, he suffered from depression . . . and he made this
decision," Javier Olea Pelaez told the Formato 21 radio station.

Ruiz Massieu was arrested in 1995 at Newark International Airport for
failing to declare $46,000 in cash he was carrying. He was fleeing to Spain
after Mexico charged him with abuse of authority, drug smuggling and money
laundering. He was held under house arrest in Palisades Park while Mexico
struggled to have him extradited.

In August, a Houston court charged him with 25 counts of money laundering
and conspiracy, accusing him of using an unidentified intermediary to move
$9.9 million in cash from Mexico to a Houston bank between 1993 and 1995.
He was taken into custody but released on a $500,000 bond.

A former assistant attorney general for drug crimes in 1994, Ruiz Massieu
was placed in charge of investigating the murder of his brother, a leader
of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

In that position, authorities accuse him of intimidating and torturing
witnesses to hide the identity of the masterminds behind that murder--the
brother of then-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari.