WASHINGTON (Reuter) The Justice Department is
investigating allegations that the older brother of former
Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari used a Mexican
government agency to launder drug profits through U.S. banks,
the Washington Post reported in Sunday editions.

Sources close to the investigation told the Post the probe
was focused on whether Raul Salinas de Gortari used a Mexican
food program known as Conasupo to shield cocaine shipments into
the United States and to launder drug money for the Gulf cartel
through U.S. bank accounts and purchasing contracts.

A Justice Department spokesman had no comment on the
newspaper report.

Another administration official said the department was
''actively looking into money laundering in U.S. banks by
Salinas and it is too early to make any assessment.''

The official said investigators had looked at banks in
Houston and New York and some Swiss authorities had been in the
United States to talk with people involved in the investigation.

Raul Salinas was a highranking official at the Mexican food
agency for part of his brother's sixyear administration and is
now in prison pending trial on charges of murder and illegal
enrichment.

One source told the newspaper Conasupo had become ``the
Salinas administration's slush fund'' where money from all sorts
of corrupt political, governmental, business and narcotics
dealings was amassed and parceled out.

``There was an infrastructure within Mexico that includes
Colombian and Mexican narcotics traffickers and highlevel
government officials acting in concert, and that's what we're
going after,'' one source told the newspaper.
The Post said the investigation began 18 months ago but has
expanded rapidly in the past three months.

It quoted sources as saying that evidence was being
collected that could implicate some of the most powerful people
in Mexico and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party,
known by its Spanish initials as PRI.

Under investigation were Carlos Hank Gonzalez and Jorge Hank
Rhon, a rich and politically powerful fatherson team.

DEA investigators were also looking into allegations that
former president Salinas' chief of staff, Jose Cordoba Montoya,
and private secretary, Justo Ceja Martinez, attended a key
meeting with Raul Salinas, Mexico's secretary of the navy, and
drug kingpin Garcia Abrego, according to the report.
The sources told the paper the Drug Enforcement Agency has
been told the men discussed various schemes to use Mexican state
enterprises to launder drug profits and ship drugs to the United
States.

The Post quoted Raul Salinas' lawyer Stanley Arkin denying
the allegations that his client used a government agency to
launder money as ``selfinterested, lying baloney.''