Mexico Voids Conviction of Ex-President's Brother

[Judi Lynn]

June 10, 2005 latimes.com

THE WORLD
Mexico Voids Conviction of Ex-President's Brother
Raul Salinas de Gortari has been jailed 10 years in rival's slaying. Judges don't explain the ruling.

By Richard Boudreaux, Times Staff Writer


MEXICO CITY — A judicial panel late Thursday voided the 1999 murder-conspiracy conviction of Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother of a former president, overturning a verdict that Mexicans had applauded as proof that the politically mighty were no longer above the law.

The three-judge panel's ruling on a defense appeal could clear the way for the flamboyant multimillionaire's release after more than 10 years in prison. He is serving a 27 1/2 -year sentence for the 1994 shooting of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, a political rival who was the No. 2 official in Mexico's long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
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Although the panel did not make its reasoning public, the decision bolstered the verdict of some historians: The wealthy brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari was guilty of profligate corruption but ended up in prison after a flawed trial that moved ahead only because it confirmed his darkest image in the public mind.
(snip)

Salinas still faces trial on charges of illicitly enriching himself through influence peddling during his brother's six-year presidential term, which ended in December 1994, three months after the killing for which he was tried.
(snip)

He also faces money-laundering charges in France, which has issued an international warrant for his arrest, and in Switzerland. The charges there stem from allegations that at least part of the $90 million seized from his Swiss bank accounts were payoffs from drug-trafficking cartels in exchange for protection.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-salinas10jun10,1,6395235.story?coll=la-headlines-world
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File photo
Raul Salinas de Gortari relaxes on a yacht off the
coast of Acapulco in 1995 with his then-mistress,
Maria Bernal of Spain.

Article: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/mexnewsun/752094