The case against Salinas has also put the government of the current president, Ernesto Zedillo, on trial. In his first months on the job, when prosecutors told him they had uncovered evidence linking Raul to the crime, Zedillo defied Mexico’s political tradition and ordered his arrest. It would be a symbol of the Mexico the reform-minded president planned to create, a modern, democratic and just country where the rich and powerful were no longer above the law. It would also help him politically. For decades in Mexico, the president has chosen his successor. The problem for Zedillo was that Carlos Salinas, the man who tapped him for the job, had become a pariah after Mexico’s 1994 economic crash. Distancing himself from Carlos Salinas (currently living in self-imposed exile in Ireland) couldn’t hurt. But four years later, the prosecution of Raul has done little to build confidence in the courts.
To many Mexicans, Raul Salinas has become an icon of a corrupt system. As a high-level official in a government agency, he made no more than $190,000 a year but managed to funnel $114 million into bank accounts in Switzerland and Britain. The Swiss government recently ordered the confiscation of his money, alleging that it came as payoffs from drug traffickers. But Mexicans have slowly lost confidence that he will be punished at home–beyond the time he has already served in a tiny cell, where his defense attorneys say he remains under video surveillance and a bright light 24 hours a day. Since his arrest on murder charges, Salinas has been cleared on charges of money laundering, tax evasion and corruption. His lawyers are now fighting a final charge of ““illegal enrichment.’’ ““People think he is guilty,’’ says Roger Bartra, a professor of sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. ““But guilty of what? Laundering money? Corruption? Murder?''
The problem is the gap between accusation and proof. Criminal lawyers familiar with the case say that although current prosecutors have linked Raul to the murder with some interesting circumstantial evidence, the most important testimony has been tainted by past mishandling of the case. At the same time, given the pressure the government faces, they wonder how Salinas could ever be released while Zedillo is still president. ““Since the people think he is guilty, the judge has the impossible task of convicting him without evidence,’’ says Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, an independent senator. ““Nobody is credible.''
The current prosecutors inherited a mess from the two teams that preceded them. They have caught Salinas in some contradictions about his association with a missing congressman believed to have been at the center of the murder plot. But the only direct testimony against Salinas comes from Ferdinand Rodriguez Gonzalez, the convicted organizer of the assassination team–and he implicated Salinas only after the second prosecutor paid him $500,000. Officials now say the payment was only to help Rodriguez Gonzalez overcome his fear of the Salinas family, officials now say; they allege that the original prosecutor–who happened to be the victim’s brother–had been in cahoots with the family and forced Rodriguez Gonzalez and others to delete Raul’s name from their official testimony. Then there was last week’s discovery by The New York Times: an audiotape of an interrogation made the day after the shooting in which Rodriguez Gonzalez’s brother, Jorge, also convicted in the plot, implicated Salinas. Even though it supports their theory, prosecutors can’t explain why they never got a copy of the tape, and now it is too late to enter it as evidence. Finally, the motive remains unclear. The best theory hinges on some sour business dealings coupled with bad feelings from the divorce of Salinas’s sister. But Massieu’s family says Raul is innocent.
A ruling against Salinas would come with a prison sentence of 20 to 50 years–and the opportunity to appeal. An acquittal could set him free on bail–for the pending illegal-enrichment charge–while the prosecution prepares its own appeal on the murder case. The judge, Ricardo Ojeda Bohorquez, who has a reputation for independence and sound decisions on several high-profile cases, has been poring over thousands of pages of testimony for the last two months. That might not matter to the public. ““There will be a verdict,’’ says Bartra, ““and whatever it is, people will think it is corruption.’’ So much for the rule of law.
