MORE DRUG CHARGES AGAINST SALINAS' BROTHER

Switzerland Adds Details In Case "All Of The Evidence Showed That He Was A
Very Important And Very Powerful Man."

- - VALENTIN ROSCHACHER,
Swiss police official

Officials in Switzerland announced yesterday that they have seized
more than $90 million from Raul Salinas, a brother of Mexico's former
president, after a police investigation found that Salinas filled
Swiss bank accounts with money he received for protecting drug
shipments into the United States.

"All of the evidence showed that he was a very important and very
powerful man," a senior Swiss police official, Valentin Roschacher,
said of Salinas at a news conference in Bern. "With all of his
contacts and power, he could guarantee those loads."

The confiscation of Salinas' fortune - and a formal Swiss request that
the authorities in Britain seize $23.4 million more that he deposited
there - marked the end of what Swiss officials said was the most
ambitious investigation they have ever undertaken into corruption abroad.

With help from law-enforcement officials in the United States, Swiss
investigators located almost 80 witnesses, who said they had seen
Salinas meet with traffickers, introduce them to other Prominent
Mexican politicians dad pick up suitcases full of cash.

But the credibility of some of those witnesses has been disputed, and
the Swiss attorney general's order to seize the money is only the
start of a legal fight that could drag on for months. Lawyers for
Salinas said they will go before Switzerland's supreme court to demand
the return of the funds.

Swiss officials did not file criminal charges of money laundering
against Salinas, asserting that the law would only allow them to if he
had been arrested in Switzerland. The officials estimate that between
1987 and 1993 Salinas took in at least $500 million in drug
traffickers' bribes.

As he has before, Salinas asserted yesterday that the money in
Switzerland was part of an investment fund he pulled together from
some of Mexico's wealthiest businessmen.

The largest of those supposed investors, Carlos Peralta, filed suit
against Salinas on Friday in Mexico City, demanding the return of
$49.7 million that he said he had invested in 1994.

Two other participants who have stepped forward, Roberto Gonzalez and
Carlos Hank Rhon, share two obvious qualities with Peralta. Both come
from families that have long been tied to the Salinases, and both are
prominent businessmen whose enterprises received lavish support during
the presidency of Carlos Salinas.

In the 369-page police report that is the basis for seizing the money,
investigators wrote that they could not determine "how far" Carlos
Salinas and other relatives might have been involved In Raul Salinas'
illicit affairs.

But the report adds: "In our opinion, it has been proven beyond a
doubt that the circle of family and friends around former President
Carlos Salinas got paid royally by various Mexican and Colombian drug
cartels for protection from arrest and security of drugs. They are
therefore co-responsible for the current major drug problems in the
United States of America."

A copy of part of the document was obtained by The New York Times.
Swiss officials said that they would not make it public.

In Mexico, prosecutors asked that last week Raul Salinas receive the
maximum sentence of 50 years in prison if he is convicted of ordering
the 1994 murder of Francisco Ruiz Massieu, a prominent governing-party
politician who was once his brother-in-law.

They also announced that they hoped to use the witnesses gathered by
the Swiss, and $119 million in bank deposits separate from those cited
by the Swiss, to pursue a drug-trafficking conspiracy case against
him. Some corruption charges are already pending in the courts.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry