REPORT FINDS DRUG TRADE, MONEY LAUNDERING

WASHINGTON - One of Mexico's wealthiest and most politically powerful
families is so involved in drug trafficking and money laundering that
the father and two sons "pose a significant criminal threat to the
United States," according to a recent report by the U.S. government's
main drug intelligence task force.

While U.S. law enforcement officials have spent years investigating
the family -- Carlos Hank-Gonzalez and his sons Carlos Hank-Rhon and
Jorge Hank-Rhon -- the assessment by several agencies marks the first
time that all three have been linked directly to the operations of
major Mexican drug organizations.

The Hank family, often described as Mexico's Rockefellers, is known
for its multibillion-dollar transportation, construction and financial
empire and its great influence within the Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI), which has ruled Mexico for seven decades.

Hank-Gonzalez, the patriarch, was mayor of Mexico City, held two
Cabinet positions in the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and
used his position as minister of agriculture to mobilize electoral
support for Salinas' successor, President Ernesto Zedillo.

He was famous for saying that "a politician who is poor is a poor
politician" when asked how he rose from poverty to become a
billionaire while never holding a job that paid more than $80,000 a
year.

Spokesmen for the Hank family denied the report, and Mexican officials
said the allegations were politically motivated and designed to
embarrass the Zedillo government.

A senior Clinton administration official acknowledged the authenticity
of the report.

It was written by the National Drug Intelligence Center, which
coordinates investigations by different agencies. It accuses the
family of using its businesses to move cocaine to the United States
and launder millions of dollars in drug money. The family enjoys
impunity in Mexico because of its high-level political connections,
the report says.

The report drew on information from the Drug Enforcement
Administration, FBI, U.S. Customs Service, CIA, Interpol and others.
The report says intelligence agencies had "intercepted conversations
of the Hank family coordinating drug shipments" at TMM -- a giant
Hank-owned shipping company -- and personally meeting with drug kingpins.

The internal document was first described Monday in the Mexican
newspaper El Financiero, and The Washington Post obtained a copy.

"Several years of investigative information strongly support the
conclusion that the Hank family has laundered money on a massive
scale, assisted drug trafficking organizations in transporting drug
shipments, and engaged in large-scale public corruption," the document
says.

"Grupo Hank poses a significant criminal threat to the United States,"
the report continues. "Its multibillion-dollar criminal and business
empire, developed over several decades, reaches throughout Mexico and
into the United States."

Carlos Arguelles, a spokesman for Hank-Gonzalez, said the accusations
were "completely false, and everyone in Mexico knows they are false
... I don't understand what is motivating these charges."

The report links sons Carlos Hank-Rhon to the late Juarez cocaine
cartel leader Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and Jorge Hank-Rhon to the
Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix drug cartel.