CORRUPTION-MEXICO: Cuba Extends a Hand to Scandal-Plagued Left

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Apr 30 2004 (IPS) - The Cuban government has turned over privileged information about a Mexican business magnate caught up in a much-publicised scandal, but instead of delivering it to the federal Mexican government, it went to the leftist administration of Mexico City.

Carlos Ahumada, a naturalised Mexican citizen originally from Argentina, was arrested in Cuba in March and, in a surprise move, deported to Mexico this week.

Ahumada fled Mexico after videos were publicised showing him turning money over to people close to the Mexico City government and the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) that runs the capital.

According to sources close to the party, all the information that the Cuban police dug up about him was handed over to party leaders during a meeting this week.

Although denied by the PRD, which has governed the Mexican capital since 1997, the local newspaper Reforma report was confirmed by IPS interviews with two sources outside the party that the meeting did take place at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City.

They said that the Cuban government of Fidel Castro delivered a written report on the Ahumada case to the municipal administration of Mexico City, headed by the PRD’s Andrés López Obrador, Mexico’s most popular politician and a likely candidate for the president in the 2006 elections.

Mayor López Obrador has accused the federal government of mounting a smear campaign against him, and has repeatedly stated that he is politically indestructible because of his own honesty and the integrity of his municipal administration.

The interpretation of local observers is that Havana opted to give political defence to its friends in the Mexican capital rather than provide the information to the federal government of President Vicente Fox. Cuba and Mexico’s bilateral relations have chilled since Fox took office three years ago.

Former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda said Cuba’s approach to the Ahumada case was clearly interference in Mexico’s internal affairs.

After announcing that the businessman would be deported, the Cuban government said in a communiqué that the matter has its political side, and that Ahumada assured "that the operation conducted with the videos on corruption, disseminated in Mexico, was deliberately calculated to achieve political objectives and planned months in advance."

The Mexican Foreign Ministry responded that Cuba’s statement was unacceptable, because it made value judgments that were not related to the case. But López Obrador said Thursday that the Cuban version of events coincides completely with his own.

In the past three years, the once close and friendly relations between Cuba and Mexico experienced an about-face to clashes and confrontations, as the Fox government continued to challenge the Caribbean island’s human rights record.

Now, Cuba has deported Ahumada just as Mexico was about to present an extradition request, and after having interrogated the businessman several times.

The ones with whom Havana seems to get along just fine is the PRD, a political force that loudly opposes the Fox government’s questioning of Cuba in terms of human rights.

Shortly after Ahumada’s arrest at the request of Mexican police, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, former PRD presidential candidate, travelled to Havana, reportedly to meet with Castro’s officials to discuss the businessman, though those conversations have not been confirmed.

Furthermore, visits to the socialist-run island by PRD leaders are ongoing, whether for tourism or as part of political exchanges.

López Obrador said he had made no contact with Cuba to negotiate Ahumada’s deportation, but stated that now it is clearer that the so-called "video scandal" is part of a plot against him, planned by operatives from the Fox government and from "the right".

In the videos, Ahumada is shown apparently handing over dollars to René Bejarano, López Obrador’s former personal secretary and head of the PRD bloc in the capital’s legislature, and to other PRD members.

Shortly after they were made public, it was reported that Rosario Robles, former president of the PRD, had engaged in an affair with the businessman and that several infrastructure projects contracted by the Mexico City government had been awarded to Ahumada’s companies without a bidding process. There were also accusations that the city paid for some of the projects even before they were built.

Ahumada owns a big construction company, two football teams and the El Independiente newspaper.

The PRD had governed Mexico City since 1997, when the first-ever elections for mayor of the capital were held. Before that, the federal government had designated the city’s leader. Sitting in the mayor’s seat have been Cárdenas, Robles and, since 2001, López Obrador.

With the Ahumada videos, which followed in the wake of another in which the capital’s former financial chief, Gustavo Ponce, is shown gambling huge sums of money in a Las Vegas casino, López Obrador’s popularity has suffered a decline.

But the mayor nonetheless remains at the head of all polls asking the question, "Who would you vote for if the presidential elections were held today?"

"I hope that whoever drew up this plan of attack (against the mayor), especially the public officials of the federal government, understand once and for all that they should not use agencies of the state in factious ways," López Obrador said.

The Fox government strongly denies carrying out any plan against the mayor, and suggests he concentrate on fighting corruption.

"The political differences should be resolved with dialogue, debate, confrontation of ideas and projects, not with strategies of annihilation, as if it were about destroying the enemy and not about defeating the adversary" in a clean fight, the mayor responded.

He says he is committed to fight the impunity of those involved in corruption, "regardless of who they are."

"In our actions we will continue proving that we are not like (the government), that we do not take part in relations of complicity and we do not accept enticements of any stripe," said López Obrador.

As for Ahumada, currently being held in a Mexico City prison under municipal authority, the mayor said he will be dealt with like any other citizen and that there will be no vengeance or reprisals against him, and that his rights will be respected.