DEATH OF EX-MEXICAN OFFICIAL ABRUPTLY ENDS U.S. CORRUPTION CASE

MEXICO CITY -- The apparent suicide of Mario Ruiz Massieu, a former
deputy attorney general who faced money-laundering charges in Texas,
has robbed U.S. prosecutors of a witness who could have tied
high-level government officials in Mexico to drug corruption, analysts
said Thursday.

If the drug-related charges filed against Ruiz Massieu in Houston last
month are to be believed, analysts said, he took to his grave
potentially incriminating secrets, including information about former
Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari; Salinas' older brother,
Raul; and the Texas banks Ruiz Massieu did business with.

U.S. prosecutors said Thursday that the case against Ruiz Massieu
would be dropped, closing an investigation that lasted years.

"A lot of people should be breathing easier," a former U.S. law
enforcement official familiar with the drug trade in Latin America
said. "You have to understand, the person he could have (hurt) the
most was his boss, Carlos Salinas."

Salinas, who lives in self-imposed exile in Ireland, repeatedly has
denied allegations of wrongdoing during his administration, as has
Raul Salinas.

On Wednesday, Ruiz Massieu apparently committed suicide at his New
Jersey apartment, abruptly closing a chapter in one of the most
dramatic political dramas in modern Mexican history, replete with
murder, mobsters and money.

Even his one-page suicide note, disclosed Thursday at his lawyer's
office in New York, reeked of political intrigue.

Ruiz Massieu, 48, blamed President Ernesto Zedillo and members of the
long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for the
assassination of his older brother, Jose Francisco, in downtown Mexico
City on Sept. 28, 1994.

At the time, Jose Francisco was the second-highest ranking official of
the party, as well as the former brother-in-law of the Salinas brothers.

"To find my brother's murderers, an investigation should be initiated
beginning with Zedillo," wrote Ruiz Massieu. "He and I knew that he
was not detached from both political crimes of 1994," he added,
referring to his brother's assassination and the assassination of PRI
presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, whom Zedillo replaced.

U.S. and Mexican officials dismissed the allegations as the ramblings
of a desperate man. If he had information implicating Zedillo in
murder, observers wondered, why didn't he use it as a bargaining tool
in his own criminal case.

Ruiz Massieu, who repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, was scheduled
for his first appearance in federal court in Houston on Friday. He was
accused of laundering $9.9 million in drug payoffs through two Houston
banks.

In trying to explain his mental state, his lawyers said that after
living in New Jersey under house arrest for the past four years, Ruiz
Massieu was afraid that because his assets had been seized, he would
be unable to post bail and would go directly to jail.

U.S. Customs officials in Newark initially held him for failing to
declare $46,000 in cash he was carrying while en route to Spain.

In Mexico City, Atty. Gen. Jorge Madrazo, who also was named in the
suicide note, defended Zedillo and other government officials.

"I think that it is an expression of a psychopath who is on the verge
of taking his life," he said.

But Lorenzo Mayer, a leading historian in Mexico, said it was
inevitable that many Mexicans will think that Ruiz Massieu had been
killed. "If you have conspiracy theories in an open society," he said,
"imagine what happens in a semi-closed society."

As for Ruiz Massieu's trial in Texas, Mayer said he was certain that
government officials would have been implicated. "Important things
were about to be exposed," he said, "when (Ruiz Massieu) decided to
quit."

To the chagrin of the Mexican government, Ruiz Massieu seemed to
confirm what U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected: that
the level of drug corruption here reaches the highest levels of government.