Mexico

Members of the Senate have declared that the Mexican Center for Research and National Security (CISEN) has been spying on them. According to some Senators, the executive branch, through the CISEN, has been gathering information about them without authorization. The Senators’ outrage comes from three sources. First, information about them was collected without permission. Second, it was discovered that the Center did not collect the information itself, but hired a private company to do so. Third, the director of the company in charge of collecting the information happens to be closely linked to the ruling National Action Party. With this evidence in hand, it is not surprising or completely unreasonable that the Senate has asked for the dismissal of Guillermo Valdés Castellanos, director of the CISEN.

Of course, the appointment and dismissal of high ranking public officials is a prerogative of the President and not of the Senate. This was clearly stated by the Ministry of the Interior in a response to the agreement reached at the Senate. In the press release, the Ministry of the Interior denies any accusations of espionage and makes a reference to the outstanding record of Valdés Castellanos as head of the CISEN. In spite of this clear demonstration of support, it seems that members of the Senate will continue to keep this event as an issue in Mexican politics.

Manlio Fabio Beltrones, Senator from Sonora, has formally placed an accusation of espionage at the Attorney General’s Office. This is quite a turn of events for Beltrones, a former high ranking official linked to the political police that was part of the PRI-led administration that ruled Mexico for more than 70 years. Beltrones, a fomer governor of Sonora, was accused by American intelligence of having ties to drug traffickers in the late 1990s. Today, Beltrones is the PRI leader at the Senate.

So for this month’s scandal, the intelligence services hired a consulting company to collect information about members of Congress. The consulting company came up with a fictitious form that Senators had to fill out for the purposes of publishing an academic book. Naïve and not-so-naïve members of Congress fell for the trick. Once they found out they were subject to an unauthorized collection of information—espionage for short, according to them—they have asked for the resignation of the head of intelligence services.

If Valdés Castellanos becomes a political liability, Calderón is likely to remove him regardless of his past record as head of intelligence. Unlike Valdés Castellanos, who can be removed quickly, Beltrones and other Senators can only be removed—or in fact prevented from reaching office—by their electorates. This usually takes up to 6 years. For better or worse, that is how fixed terms work.

On June 18th, the Swiss government announced that it would hand over approximately $74 million dollars to the Mexican government. This is just part of the assets that the Swiss Government confiscated from Raul Salinas de Gortari, brother of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, former President of Mexico. The remaining part of the assets would be returned to other claimants.

In 1994, Mario Ruiz Massieu, a Deputy Attorney General investigating the murder of his brother, resigned to his position during a famous press conference in which he said that “the demons are out there”. With this phrase he informally accused high ranking officials of interfering with his investigation. One of those high ranking officials was Raul Salinas de Gortari, who was later found guilty of planning the assassination of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, former governor of Guerrero, Secretary General of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and former brother-in-law. Raul Salinas was imprisoned in 1995 and released 10 years later due to insufficient evidence of his participation in the assassination. However, he was also charged with corruption and illicit enrichment after the Swiss government found that millions of dollars linked to him could be traced to drug cartels.

On the basis of Swiss and Mexican investigations, it was demonstrated that at least $74 million dollars were linked to criminal activities. These assets are being returned to the victims of the crime. The Swiss government assumes these victims are the people of Mexico. I am sure that the Mexican government will be happy to be the representative of these victims. Hopefully, the government is now free of all those “demons” that were out there in the mid 1990s.