Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Contact:  http://www.ocregister.com/
Pubdate: Sat,3 Oct 1998
Author: Julia Preston-The New York Times

Mexico City-Even in Mexico,where people are used to hearing that politicians
have fat bank accounts,Swiss police caused a stir when they announced three
years ago that Raul Salina de Gortari, the brother of the former president,
had about $100 million in secret Swiss bank accounts.

Now Mexican investigators say his fortune is even heftier.

Mexican federal prosecutors disclosed Friday that they are investigating 289
bank accounts in Mexico, the United States and Europe controlled by Salinas
or his accountants, with deposits totaling $119 million. Those funds are
separate from the Swiss accounts, the investigators said.

The Mexican government also had seized an account in Britain holding $23.5
million. In addition, investigations have turned up 123 properties
authorities say belonged to Salinas, from homes to horse ranches, including
37 outside Mexico.

No new charges were brought Friday against Salinas, who was formally accused
of graft when he was a government employee, and homicide in the 1994 murder
of politician Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu. Nor did the investigators
disclose what they believe may be the origin of the funds. No narcotics or
drug-money-laundering charges have been brought against Salinas in Mexico.

But police and prosecutors in Switzerland are preparing a civil
drug-money-laundering case against Salinas, the older brother of former
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in an effort to seize his funds there.
In a secret 369-page report on their inquiry, Swiss police investigators
asserted that "a cautious estimate" of the money Raul Salinas earned from
drug traffickers during the 10 years before his arrest would be "a total of
at least $500 million."

But the Swiss investigators also acknowledged they gathered "sometimes
precise and sometimes less precise information concerning the amounts of the
drug money given to Raul Salinas."

Salinas, who has been confined since February 1995 to a maximum security
prison near Mexico City - even though he has not been convicted of any
crime - adamantly denies he had any dealings with drug traffickers.

His lawyer, Eduardo Luengo Creel, called the Swiss police report "a
fantasy." He insisted all of his client's money in Swiss accounts was of
legitimate provenance and had been contributed by prominent businessmen who
fund to be run by Salinas.

Luengo called the figures "truly Inconceivable," adding, "They simply don't
check at all with the audits we have done of Salinas' assets."

Mexican prosecutors have created confusion in the past about bank account
totals by listing only deposits without calculating withdrawals. Salinas
used a number of international bank accounts that were simply conduits,
where large amounts of money were deposited and withdrawn every day, his
lawyers said.

Jose Luis Ramos Rivera, the top prosecutor in Salinas' case, said
investigators came upon a trove of new financial information about Salinas
after his chief accountant, Juan Manuel Gomez Gutierrez, jumped bail and
disappeared in July.

Police searched 25 homes and offices linked to Gomez in Mexico City and the
northern city of Chihuahua, and found computer disks and documents with
information on at least 70 bank accounts the authorities had not known
about.

Ramos said Gomez had operated a network of front companies and had issued
false loans through a foreign "tax paradise," which Ramos declined to
identify, to conceal millions of dollars in transactions.

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Checked-by: Don Beck