JAILED TOP MEXICO COP SENT TO U.S. TO TESTIFY

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 ground-breaking collaboration
between the countries, former Police Director Adrian Carrera Fuentes
was able to tell a federal grand jury in Houston last month that he
collected nearly $2 million in drug bribes in 1993 and 1994 and turned
over the money to a former colleague, Mario Ruiz Massieu, according to
two officials familiar with the testimony.

U.S. investigators said Carrera's account could be long-sought
evidence in 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 during 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 hope the testimony of Carrera and other new witnesses
eventually may 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 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 Houston probably was most important for the precedent it sets.

"This is extremely important to the relationship," said one U.S.
law-enforcement official. "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 his previous sworn statements. "If he tells the
truth now, Mario will have no problems," she said.

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 modernized that country's
justice system by allowing prosecutors to protect cooperative
witnesses and plea-bargain with criminals.

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.

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.

While serving as the warden of the Mexico City prison where he is now
being held, Carrera told a Mexican court, he met several major drug
traffickers as inmates. Shortly after he took over as a commander in
the Federal Judicial Police, one inmate, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, had
been released and summoned him to a safehouse in a stylish Mexico City
neighborhood.

According to a summary of Carrera's testimony reported in the Mexico
City newspaper Reforma, "He asked whether he would be given protection
to continue in his drug-trafficking activities. Adrian Carrera told
the trafficker he would dispatch police agents to guard him and he

promised not to persecute him."

Carrera said he met Carrillo again in 1993 and repeated that he would
not bother him in Mexico City. The trafficker handed Carrera an
attache case containing more than $300,000 in cash and shouted to one
of his lieutenants to buy the police official a new Cadillac -- "the
most luxurious one there was."

Carrera also was quoted as saying he earned a commission of $1,500 for
every kilogram of cocaine he allowed to move freely to the U.S.
through Mexico.

If true, that account would underscore how payoffs to Mexican
officials exploded in the early 1990s.

Checked-by: "Rich O'Grady"