MEXICO LET FORMER POLICE DIRECTOR TESTIFY IN US

Collaboration On High-Ranking Drug Case A First

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 groundbreaking collaboration between
the two countries, former Police Director Adrian 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,

U.S. investigators said Carrera's account could be the evidence they have
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 amid 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 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' elder brother, Raul, 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 in
the United States was probably most important for the precedent it sets.

"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
for our ability to prosecute."

A lawyer 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 paraded court witnesses and confidential
informants many times beore. 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.

His appearance is also notable because Mexican officials said they might
yet try again to extradite Ruiz Massieu to face drug or corruption charges
in Mexico. Ruiz Massieu's former secretary, Maria Dolores Mota, has also
begun to cooperate with the Mexican authorities after spending more than
three years as a fugitive.

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 Raul Salinas in 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.