/REPEAT//POLITICS-MEXICO: PRI Suffers Amnesia on Campaign Funding

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Aug 18 1998 (IPS) - Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party appears to be suffering amnesia over million-dollar election campaign donations from alleged embezzlers and friends of the mafia, but the opposition aims to refresh its memory.

Representatives of the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) and the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) promised Monday to bring the issue up in various public forums, to call for clarification and examine possibilities of legal action.

Accusations of irregular funding of the PRI presented in 1994 by the opposition took on a clearer shape in the last few days, when independent investigations and declarations from those who gave the money came to light.

The PRI received million-dollar contributions for President Ernesto Zedillo’s 1994 election campaign from a businessman about to be extradited from Switzerland – a fugitive banker accused of mafia links – and another on trial for embezzlement.

“We don’t know anything, if there were irregular payments we were not aware of it,” said PRI representatives.

The PRI, which has ruled Mexico non-stop since 1929, denied either knowing or being associated with either of the accused, who both claim party membership.

And this is strange as PRI publications commemorating Zedillo’s presidential campaign carry photographs of the businessmen, their names can be clearly read and there are photographs of buildings they owned covered in pro-Zedillo propaganda.

Former director of the Aeromexico company, Gerardo de Prevoisin, arrested August 7 in Switzerland and undergoing extradition on embezzlement charges, revealed he was pressured into giving the PRI eight million dollars in 1994.

According to Mexican daily ‘Reforma’ Monday, Prevoisin declared to investigators the former leader of the Televisa emporium and current PRI governor of Veracruz state, Miguel Aleman, managed the “donation.”

Futhermore, he stated current governor of the Central Bank, Guillermo Ortiz, had asked him to leave the country to avoid problems. After doing so, Prevoisin was accused of embezzlement of funds from Aeromexico, a company where the State is a major shareholder.

Angel Rodriguez, former director of Banpais and today on trial for arranging loans to himself and operations with no reserve back- up, said in July he had made million-dollar donations to the PRI in 1994 and that Ortiz had afterwards put pressure on him to leave the country too.

Rodriguez, arrested in Spain early in the year and later extradited, said it used to be common for bankers to be “invited” to support the PRI. Rodriguez is now being tried by Mexican judges, but as the charges are not considered serious he is not being kept in custody.

Opposition parties claim the PRI presidential campaigns – which always gave the appearance of being immensely expensive – could only have been achieved with support from entrepreneurs in exchange for promises and favours.

Journalistic investigations corroborated by some PRI militants indicate another banker involved in irregularities and a fugitive today, Carlos Cabal, also contributed millions of dollars to the Zedillo campaign.

Cabal, who directed the Union bank, had been linked with narcotraffic in investigations undertaken by the General Attorney’s office.

Rodriguez and Cabal’s banks were intervened by the Zedillo government in 1995 to save them from collapse after unrepaid loans snowballed following the economic crisis of late 1994.

According to the PAN and PRD, the money the authorities put forward to rescue the bank – and which they now want to turn into a public debt under a project presented in Congress – was largely used to cover up irregular manoevres by businessmen closely allied to the government and contributory payments to the PRI.

“We do not accept the accusations, but if in some way contributions were received in a personal capacity this does not imply the PRI bought impunity or is against the interests of society,” said Mariano Palacios, chair of the ruling party.