JAILED MEXICAN OFFICIAL ALLOWED TO TESTIFY IN U.S.

HOUSTON -- After years of blocking U.S. efforts to investigate corruption in
their ranks, Mexican law enforcement officials have allowed the jailed
former head of their national police to travel secretly to the United States
to testify about drug payoffs at high levels of the Mexican government.

In what U.S. officials described as a ground-breaking collaboration between
the two countries, former Police Director Adrien Carrera Fuentes told a
federal grand jury in Houston in June that he collected nearly $2 million in
drug bribes in 1993 and 1994 and turned the money over to a former
colleague, Mario Ruiz Massieu, two officials familiar with the testimony said.

Key evidence

U.S. investigators said Carrera's account could be the evidence they had
long sought in what has been a frustrating effort to prosecute Ruiz Massieu,
who was arrested in New Jersey three years ago, or extradite him to Mexico
to face charges there.

Mexican officials took the case so seriously that they agreed to let Carrera
travel to the United States in the midst of an angry dispute over the
Clinton administration's failure to alert them to a huge U.S. undercover
operation to stop money-laundering by Mexican banks.

U.S. officials are hopeful that the testimony of Carrera and other new
witnesses may eventually prompt Ruiz Massieu to testify himself about
allegations of corruption in the inner circle of former President Carlos
Salinas de Gortari. The discovery of more than $130 million that was
deposited in Swiss banks by Salinas' brother, RaFAl, has led to corruption
investigations in Europe, the United States and Mexico.

But U.S. officials said Mexico's decision to allow Carrera to testify was
probably most important for the precedent it set.

``This is extremely important to the relationship,'' one U.S. law
enforcement official said. ``When you have as much cross-border crime as we
and Mexico have, the ability to share these witnesses is a significant
breakthrough.''

An attorney for Ruiz Massieu, Cathy Fleming, said Carrera's reported
testimony contradicted previous sworn statements he had given. She said,
``If he tells the truth now, Mario will have no problems.''

The two governments have traded court witnesses and confidential informants
many times before. But Carrera is the first witness to reach the United
States from the upper ranks of the Mexican government after taking advantage
of a new law that has modernized that country's justice system by allowing
prosecutors to protect cooperative witnesses and plea-bargain with criminals.

Senior official

Carrera, 55, held senior posts in Mexico's prison system and police force
during most of the six years Salinas was president. He also worked closely
with Ruiz Massieu, who served twice as a deputy attorney general and who,
during six months in 1994, supervised federal police and anti-drug operations.

After Ruiz Massieu fled Mexico in early 1995 and was arrested at Newark
International Airport, Carrera was charged in Mexico City with having helped
him to cover up the role of RaFAl Salinas in allegedly ordering a political
assassination.

Although the authorities never made a case against Carrera at that time, he
was arrested again in late March during a raid by the new Organized Crime
Unit of the police force he once led. Confronted with what was by then
considerable evidence of his involvement in drug trafficking and other
crimes, he opted to become the new squad's most important cooperating
witness to date.

Plea bargain

Carrera is now serving a four-year prison sentence as part of his plea
bargain. In court proceedings this year in Mexico City, he has confirmed
much of what U.S. officials long suspected about him.

At their own initiative, Mexican law enforcement officials arranged to bring
Carrera to Houston, where he testified June 3 to a federal grand jury that
was just starting to hear new evidence against Ruiz Massieu.

Some Mexican officials have hinted that in debriefings with the Organized
Crime Unit, Carrera has provided incriminating information against not only
Ruiz Massieu but also Rafael Salinas and others close to the former
president. Rafael Salinas remains in jail in Mexico on charges of ordering
the slaying of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, and officials in Switzerland
said they would soon confiscate more than $132 million that Salinas
deposited in banks there, asserting that it came from drug traffickers' bribes.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett