DRUG PROBE SPOTLIGHTS CORRUPTION IN MEXICO

JUSTICE? Despite strong evidence provided by the U.S.,a drug trafficker
goes free.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - For nearly a decade,the U.S. government has been
trying to prosecute a Mexican Multimillionaire accused of running a cartel
that smuggled tons of cocaine into California several years ago.

When U.S. drug agents raided one of his warehouses, it was the largest
single drug bust in history U.S. agents thought it was an open and shut
case against the suspect, Rafael Munoz Talavera, because several
traffickers arrested after the drug seizure identified him as their leader.

But despite two trials, one conviction and what U.S. prosecutors say is
overwhelming evidence against him, Munoz is free. Authorities say he is
directing a violent campaign to seize control of a major part of the
Mexican drug trade.

Neither government has ever publicly explained the collapse of the lengthy
effort to convict Munoz. But the story of the investigation based on
interviews with law-enforcement officials, judges who tried Munoz and an
examination of documents - reveals a Mexican criminal justice system rife
with chaos, corruption and mismanagement.

In the first trial, the police and prosecutors, who were later accused of
accepting bribes from the drug cartel that officials say was run by Munoz,
steered a watered-down package of evidence to a friendly judge. A second
trial, bolstered by evidence from investigators in the United States, ended
in a conviction. But a Mexican appeals court freed Munoz, ruling that he
had been illegally tried twice on the same criminal charges.

During the trials, Munoz was lodged in comfortable suites in Mexican
federal prisons. "We knew he was going to walk from the date of his
arrest," said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "In
Mexico, the guy with the biggest pocketbook always wins."

Now Munox is back in Ciudad Jauraz, just across the border from El Paso,
Texas, and U.S. prosecutors are working to assemble another case against
him.

Munoz did not respond to requests to discuss his legal fight. But in
December, in a newspaper advertisement, he denied any involvement in drug
trafficking and described himself as a "simple, hard-working man."

The lawyer who defended Munoz in his seven-year legal battle, Sergio Roldan
Ramos, was murdered in Ciudad Jaurez in October. And Roldan's partners and
other lawyers who have worked for Munoz did not respond to interview
requests.

Munoz's release and criminal comeback dramatize the legal crisis
threatening Mexico's modernization. The economy has opened up and
opposition political parties are finding a voice. But criminal syndicates
are casting a widening shadow, and the widely held belief is that the
justice system is riddled with graft and incompetence, mired in archaic
procedures and shielded from accountability.

Mexican hold every element involved in disrepute - from the police and
prosecutors to judges and jailers. A 1996 United Nations survey asked
Mexicans how much confidence they had in their judicial system, and 80
percent responded "little" or "none," the worst showing of any Latin
American country.

"We have a justice system immersed in the routine violation of every basic
principle," said Eduardo Lopez Betancourt, a law professor at the national
university. "Nothing is respected. Prosecutors rig evidence and judges sell
verdicts according to the highest bidder, without delay, favoring every
kind of criminal from drug traffickers to car thieves."

Confronted with this crisis, U.S. prosecutors routinely press to extradite
traffickers for trial in U.S. courts. Although the extradition of Mexicans
is constitutionally barred, officials in Washington say Mexico has recently
vowed to honor future extradition requests.

Still, the U.S. government has never successfully extradited a major
Mexican drug dealer.

Four years ago, Mexican President Ernest Zedillo replace the entire Supreme
Court and established a Judicial Council to attack corruption. By requiring
competitive examinations, the reform cleaned up the previous system of
judicial appointments, based on cronyism. But otherwise the council has
been timid.

Many of the forces that foiled the prosecution of Munoz are embedded in the
nation's justice system.

Graft is considered rampant. In the Munoz case, only the police and a
prosecutor were accused in U.S. testimony of corruption, but many judges
are also suspect.

Judges allow thousands of fugitives to avoid arrest. The police commander
who led the arrest of Munoz was later charged with taking bribes from the
drug cartel. But he was never arrested because he got an amparo, or writ,
barring his detention.

Court papers are secret, inhibiting accountability or independent scrutiny.
Officials at the five Mexican courts that heard the various stages of
Munoz's case refused to allow reporters to read the trial record, citing
laws that keep document from scholars and journalist.

The system is poorly managed. The judge in Munoz's second trial found him
guilty, only to be reversed on appeal because he was tried twice for the
same alleged offense.

The Mexican attorney general's office was in such disorder that 10
successive federal attorneys were assigned to oversee his second 30-month
trial.

Until late 1989, Munoz, 45, was known in Juarez as a sober, even taciturn
restaurateur from a leading local family. Agents for the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration were suspicious of a $3 million estate he had
built in El Paso, but he was not known as a major trafficker.

Then drug agents received a tip about suspicious comings and goings at a
warehouse in the Los Angeles suburb of Sylmar. With a search warrant, they
sliced off a $5 padlock and discovered 36 wooden pallets stacked with boxes
of cocaine. The hoard, weighing 21.4 tons, was the size of two school
buses.

Ledger books showed that billions of dollars of cocaine - hundreds of tons
- - had passed through the warehouse. The seizure caused what a cable from
the U.S. Embassy in Mexico called "an earthquake" that redefined
Washington's understanding of the drug war by high-lighting the growing
role of Mexican smugglers.

Not only was it clear that Mexican smugglers were significant new players,
but a dozen traffickers arrested at Sylmar identified Munoz as their
leader.

"We knew the dope came from Munoz Talavera," said James P. Walsh, the
assistant U.S. attorney who supervised the investigation. As a result, the
clamor for Munoz's detention became intense.

Five weeks later, Mexico's federal police arrested him in a dingy Ciudad
Juarez hotel in possession of several rifles and handguns. Police said they
had seized a small bag of cocaine during a raid on one of his houses. He
was initially arraigned on drug possession and weapons violations, which
were broadened to include drug trafficking charges. Mexican prosecutors
announced triumphantly that he was facing 60 years.

But his case went before a judge with a reputation for leniency.

>From the beginning, the circumstances of Munoz's arrest aroused suspicions
>among U.S. officials that the prosecution was rigged.

First, authorities announced his arrest in advance, inviting reporters to
film Munoz as police escorted him handcuffed out of the hotel. Then the
hotel manager said that the room in which Munoz was arrested had been
rented not by Munoz, but by police a week earlier.

Later, more disturbing information emerged. Two Mexican officials involved
in Munoz's arrest and trial were accused in U.S. court testimony of
receiving huge bribes from Munoz's drug organization.

Elias Ramirez Ruiz was the powerful federal police commander in Chihuahua,
the state in which Ciudad Juarez is located, who orchestrated Munoz's
arrest and assembled the initial evidence. Javier Coello Trejo was Mexico's
deputy attorney general, based in Mexico City, who channeled evidence
received from U.S. officials to Mexican prosecutors in Ciudad Juarez, and
supervised the Munoz case.

In late 1990, even before Munoz's first trial ended, Ramirez and Coello
were driven from office by a barrage of corruption charges. Since his
resignation, several witnesses in at least three federal trials in Texas
have detailed how Coello received suitcases of cash from the Ciudad Juarez
and other drug cartels.

Mexican press reports accused Ramirez of staging several phony cocaine
seizures as window dressing for Mexico's anti-drug effort. And two years
later, Ramirez was charged with narcotics smuggling and racketeering.
Federal prosecutors sought his arrest, but he obtained an amparo from a
judge and has never been detained.

A year ago in a Houston courtroom, a former police officer working for
Ramirez in Ciudad Jaurez at the time of Munoz's arrest and trial testified
that both Ramirez and Coello were working with Munoz's organization. Cesar
Dominguez Becerra was asked to describe his duties.

Dominguez testified that he had personally delivered bundles of cash from
the cartel to Coello.

"Where did you deliver this money to Coello Trejo?" he was asked.

"Sometimes in the federa police office itself," he said.

In an interview, Coello denied that he had accepted drug bribes, saying "no
trafficker has ever paid me one cent." He scoffed at assertions that U.S.
officials suspected him of corruption, reeling off names of U.S. agents
with whom he had worked closely.