The Narco News Bulletin
"The name
of our country is América"
-- Simón
Bolívar
Global Alert 
June 24, 2000
Citibank
Implicated in Money Laundering for Fox Campaign
U.S.
Interests Are Found Along Illicit Money Route
"Spurious
Opposition" Revealed
Special
to The Narco News Bulletin by Al Giordano
Vicente Fox, who promised
the Mexican people that he would be the alternative to the 71-year rule of the PRI party,
has spent mountains of money in this presidential campaign.
The candidate of the National
Action Party (PAN) began his campaigning with the group "Amigos
of Fox," placing massive amounts of advertising on TV, radio
and in newspapers. Then the PAN party officially nominated him,
and that party, too, has spent way beyond the public election
funds granted for the campaign. Although Mexico's campaign finance
reporting requirements are very weak, these basic facts are documented,
especially in how much Fox has spent on TV and other advertising.
América has already
seen this year one example of "spurious opposition"
in Perú, in which Alejandro Toledo, the former World Bank
employee who challenged the dictatorial Alberto Fujimori, turned
out to be holding secret meetings with the US Ambassador to Perú
and -- as reported in our recent editorial -- one of his top campaign consultants has now
been exposed as an espionage agent for the government of Spain.
The Narco News Bulletin publishes today's June 22, 2000
edition much later than usual because we wanted to make sure
that the facts of this story were nailed down. The allegations
are very serious.
We especially felt it
important to look more deeply into the allegations regarding
Vicente Fox and money laundering because the accusation was first
made, and copies of the checks and other documents offered, by
officials in Mexico's ruling PRI party. We were not about to
plow into this story and spread campaign disinformation without
looking into the matter ourselves.
Another factor that gave
us pause with this story is that the evidences -- in the form
of bank checks and other documents -- could only have been obtained
illegally by the ruling PRI party.
At the same time that
the Mexican Congress is condemning the round-the-clock effort by computer hackers
to open the FOBAPROA bank scandal file -- the legislators use as their excuse the "Secret
Banking" laws that exist -- those very same laws were clearly
broken in bringing this information about the Fox campaign to
light.
Now that these documents
and checks have, however, flown into public view, our first question
was: Are they real? Did these checks that were laundered internationally
in a classic money-laundering route truly exist?
No matter how they were
obtained, if these checks are real, the public has a right to
know about them that surpasses any right by the wealthy and powerful
to hide the truth from the people.
And if the checks are
simply invented, false, made-up, the people have a right to know
that too.
The confirmation of the
key facts came from the most surprising of sources: the very
same Vicente Fox.
According to El Universal
of June 22, 2000:
Vicente Fox responded
to the accusations. He accepted that the checks are real, but
assured, "not one centavo has entered from outside the country;
they are donations by people, from simple people to professionals
and businessowners."
Fox then accused the Mexican
federal government of "espionage" against him in their
obtaining of the documents.
We conclude that, yes,
Fox is correct that he -- and every member of the opposition
from political parties to members of Civil Society -- have been
victims of illegal spying. The Narco News Bulletin and
its publisher, too, have in our possession proofs and evidences
that the US State Department and Mexican authorities have done
the same with us: Welcome to the club, Mr. Fox. Standing up to
the powerful and to the corrupt can be a real drag sometimes.
Unfortunately for Fox
-- and this in no way is meant to apologize or make excuses for
illegal espionage, which Narco News and its publisher
have condemned more forcefully than Mr. Fox has done and over
a longer period of time -- if he and his campaign operators had
not been violating laws and basic human ethics, the espionage
would not have harmed his campaign as it has today.
To be crystal clear, as
this case is investigated, those who engaged in illegal espionage
must be punished and exposed. And The Narco News Bulletin
will not now nor never push that very serious part of this developing
story under the rug.
But the fact remains that
these documents, which Fox himself says are real, demonstrate:
1.
Money-laundering by
the Fox campaign in a style that mirrors that of the narco-traffickers.
2.
The use of foreign
banks -- in violation of Mexican law -- to launder Fox campaign
money.
3.
Involvement in the
dark route of these monies by foreign banking institutions such
as Citibank of New York -- already implicated in the Salinas
and Hank family money-laundering scandals -- and the Bank of
the West, of El Paso, Texas.
4.
Also implicated in
this international money-laundering route is a company named
Dehydration Technologies of Belgium and a transfer of $200,000
US Dollars to a bank account in Puebla, Mexico.
5.
Mexican banking and
business institutions can also be found on this money-laundering
route: BANAMEX, Bancomer, Bital, and TV Azteca, which received
around $90,000 US Dollars through this scheme for Fox campaign
TV ads, but from other sources than the Fox campaign. All of
them are owned by key players in the New Mexican Oligarchy. Not
only did they set Fox up to knock him down, but they all made
money off the deal.
6.
The Fox campaign finance
chairman, Lino Korrodi, who was Fox's boss at the Coca-Cola company
in Mexico, and his companies K-Beta, Grupo Alta Technología
en Impresos, and his company ST-and-K of Mexico.
7.
The company Fox Brothers
-- "that is not the name of a circus," noted a PRI
legislator yesterday when offering these evidences in the Mexican
federal House of Deputies -- transfered $33,690 US dollars from
Citibank in New York to the "Amigos of Fox" campaign
organization and other businesses in this money-laundering pipeline.
One fact that particularly
drew our attention at The Narco News Bulletin was the
way that certain monies had been broken down into smaller sums
and then re-assembled (a classic money-laundering maneuver to
avoid official suspicion).
Under US law, all checks
and money transfers of $10,000 or more receive greater bank scrutiny
and must be reported to federal treasury officials.
Interesting, then, that
the first two checks, photocopied below, were each for $8,500
US dollars, even though they came from the same sources and had
the same destinations.
The second two checks,
for roughly $30,000 US dollars each, were then channeled from
these funds to TV Azteca to pay for Fox's ad campaign.
This is a chart from El Universal of June 22, 2000, that we will
translate.
It is titled:
"THE
ROUTE OF THE RESOURCES"
"Flow of
money coming from outside the country for the campaign of Vicente
Fox, according to the PRI"
"Valeria
Korridi Ordaz concentrates donations from North American businesses
in account #3039579 of the Bank of the West of El Paso, Texas,
and transfers those resources to...
"Carlotta
Robinson Kauachi, account #50323 of Banco Ixe, Insurgentes Branch
in Mexico City, these funds are then transferred to...
"TV Azteca,
and other businesses, to cover the costs of the campaign of Vicente
Fox."
If everything was transparent
and above board, asks The Narco News Bulletin, about these
money transfers (in total amounting to $400,000 US Dollars),
why was the money moved, as if by ants, in amounts less than
$10,000?
Because, Narco News
believes based on these documented facts and our own experience
investigating drug money laundering that the money coming from
the Bank of the West, of El Paso, Texas, was subject to US laws
and financial regulations. Had the checks been for amounts of
over $10,000, a greater scrutiny would have been applied.
In this dirty money trail
we note the same players that have been implicated in the major
Mexican drug money laundering cases of recent history: Citibank,
BANAMEX, TV Azteca....
The Narco News Bulletin will not speculate tonight on
the political implications of this discovery for Vicente Fox
or his campaign, or the Mexican election of July 2, 2000.
That is for the Mexican
people to decide.
But it is clear that Fox,
if these evidences do derail his campaign, will not be the only
loser. What of his millions of sincere supporters, especially
the young people of Mexico, who, according to polls, supported
him in greater numbers, because they saw in Fox a hope for an
alternative to the PRI regime?
How do they come to grips
with this hammer-blow of information just ten days before the
vote?
How can the July 2, 2000
vote possibly be defined as free, fair and transparent, now that
it is revealed that the same financial interests -- Citibank,
Banamex, TV Azteca, etc... -- implicated in drug money laundering
by PRI officials, can now be found along the money laundering
trail of Fox and the PAN.
The dirty money trail
in which they are found has, with little time left in the campaign
-- and perhaps with the complicity of some of them in leaking
these documents? -- come at the 11th hour before the July 2nd
vote.
And yet Vicente Fox admits
that the checks are real.
Fox cannot escape personal
responsibility for this money-laundering plot.
Because the company Fox
Brothers is implicated in this trail;
Because Fox's campaign
finance chairman is implicated;
Because, also, Rito Padilla
García, the personal secretary of the Governor of Guanajuato
-- a PAN member who substituted Fox -- received 11 checks adding
up to $25,000 US dollars as part of this money trail:
For these clear evidences
and more, this money-laundering plot involves the central core
of Fox and his campaign.
They were spied on. They
were set up. But they allowed themselves to be set up by engaging
in illicit activity. And now they are paying the high price of
deceit.
The Narco News Bulletin investigation of the United States
involvement this money-laundering trail has only just begun.
From the beginning of
our Mexican election coverage we have demonstrated that United
States interests are manipulating the process in Mexico.
What US businesses or
political interests participated in Foxgate? Were they licit
businesses? Or does the need to launder the money through a sophisticated
route of "pulverizations" (dividing the money into
small checks but sending them to the same source) indicate the
involvement of interests with something more to hide?
Poor Vicente Fox. So far
from God. So close to the United States of America.
Because sometimes
it takes gringos to expose gringos