NEW RAUL SALINAS CHARGES

Ex-president's brother set up Mexican drug network, probe says

MEXICO CITY -- After a nearly three-year inquiry into drug corruption in
Mexico, Swiss police investigators have concluded that a brother of former
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari played a central role in Mexico's
cocaine trade, raking in huge bribes to protect the flow of drugs into the
United States.

In a secret, 369-page report, the investigators assert that Salinas' older
brother, Raul, used his wide influence in the administration to organize an
elaborate network of protection for drug smugglers. He also channeled drug
money to his brother's presidential campaign, the report alleges.

``When Carlos Salinas de Gortari became president of Mexico in 1988, Raul
Salinas de Gortari assumed control over practically all drug shipments
through Mexico,'' the report states. ``Through his influence and bribes paid
with drug money, officials of the army and the police supported and
protected the flourishing drug business.''

`Green-light days'

From a low-profile position in the administration's food-distribution
agency, the report states, Raul Salinas commandeered government trucks and
railroad cars to haul cocaine north. On what some of his reputed former
associates referred to as ``green-light days,'' the report says, he arranged
for drug loads to move through Mexico without concern that they might be
checked by the army, the coast guard or the federal police.

A partial copy of the report, which appears to be based largely on
interviews with unidentified witnesses, was obtained by the New York Times.
Swiss officials said they expected it to be the basis for their government's
seizure in the coming weeks of more than $130 million that Raul Salinas
deposited in Swiss banks.

Lawyers for Raul Salinas, who received a copy of the report about two months
ago, dismissed it Friday as the slanderous product of a Swiss crusade to
confiscate what they insist is a fortune that their client earned by
legitimate means.

``The report is absolutely false,'' Salinas' lead attorney, Eduardo Luengo
Creel, said. ``It contains statements, assertions and situations that do not
correspond to the facts. It is a police report; it does not have the
validity of an evaluation by an investigating judge.

``We do not even know who these people are,'' Luengo said of the many
confidential informants listed in the document. ``To accuse someone with
anonymous witnesses is unconstitutional in any country that enjoys the rule
of law.''

The report states that Swiss investigators were unable to determine
conclusively what involvement the former president, his father and other
family members might have had in the purportedly illicit activities of Raul
Salinas.

Some relatives, it implies, were among a group of people around Raul Salinas
who were implicated in criminal activities by witnesses whom the report
describes as ``principally credible''; it does not name any of those people.

Reference to president

The report also notes that the investigators did not look further into the
matter because the people mentioned were irrelevant to their inquiry into
whether Salinas' Swiss funds came from illegal activities.

Somewhat obliquely, the report adds: ``We have to seriously question the
probability that a person with as much power as the president of Mexico for
years did not learn about criminal activities of this extent, even if his
brother was heavily involved.''

The Swiss report is by far the most exhaustive assessment to date of Raul
Salinas' reported dealings with the Mexican underworld.

It is clearly a prosecutorial document, one that cites Salinas' own version
of events mostly to show how it appears to contradict other facts. Because
the seizure of Salinas' assets would be a civil-court action, the report
also aims at a considerably lower threshold of proof than would be required
in a criminal case.

Raul Salinas was widely rumored to have grown rich on dubious business
dealings during his brother's presidency, but the accusations were almost
never public or specific. Shortly after Carlos Salinas stepped down in
December 1994, his chosen successor, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon,
shattered a long Mexican tradition of impunity for presidential families by
authorizing Raul Salinas' arrest on charges that he ordered the murder of a
leader of the governing party who was Raul's former brother-in-law.

In the tiny maximum-security prison cell where Salinas has spent the past 3
1/2 years, he has been struck by wave after wave of new allegations. Federal
prosecutors in New York are pressing ahead with a criminal investigation
into the possibility that he may have laundered illicit funds through his
accounts at Citibank in New York. And after a series of reversals in their
murder case, Mexican officials say they are close to announcing new
corruption charges against him.

Checked-by: Don Beck