salinas killing deepens the family's drama

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 9 - The mystery surrounding the killing of the brother of a former president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, is becoming a national obsession, with the twin revelations that the victim wrote a despondent note shortly before his death and that he was under investigation in France for laundering money.

Carlos Salinas's youngest brother, Enrique, had stayed largely out of the limelight for years until his body was discovered Monday in a family car parked on a residential suburban street. His head had been shoved in a yellow plastic bag and he had been strangled.

There were bruises on Mr. Salinas's face, suggesting that his killers had blindfolded and punched him before he died. He was 52, a multimillionaire engineer with cash-flow problems, a divorced wife and three grown children, investigators said.

The killing comes four years after the ex-president's elder brother, Raúl, a colorful businessman who grew rich during Carlos Salinas's administration, was convicted of ordering the killing of another politician and sent to prison, shattering the impunity that the rich and powerful once enjoyed in Mexico.

Raúl Salinas's business dealings have long been a subject of investigation here and in Europe because of allegations, so far unproved, that government funds and ill-gotten drug profits ended up in his bank.

Enrique Salinas and his former wife lived in Paris during the 1990's. Since 1996 French authorities have been investigating what role, if any, they played in helping Raúl Salinas move large amounts of money between banks, according to a French judicial official.

The French police recently visited the Salinases' apartment in Paris to inform Raúl Salinas that he was going to be charged with laundering money by buying property in France with funds from embezzlement schemes and drug dealing, Notimex, the official news agency of the Mexican government, reported Thursday. Not finding him, the French authorities put an alert out through Interpol on Nov. 22, asking the Mexican police to locate him, prosecutors here said.

What all this has to do with Mr. Salinas's death early Monday is unclear, but speculation has dominated the capital's rumor mill and talk radio. The Mexican authorities are still treating the death as a failed attempt to extort information or money from Mr. Salinas, discounting any link to Raúl Salinas or money transfers.

On Thursday, the Mexico State prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Alfonso Navarrete Prida, released an unsigned note, apparently in Mr. Salinas's handwriting, that he said was found on the body. The note said Mr. Salinas, his family and his children had been threatened by unnamed people.

The note said that since 1995, someone had been harassing Mr. Salinas, making it impossible for him to continue doing business. It went on to say the harassment had affected his business partners and his children, "who have had to confront a great risk to their security, both physical and emotional."

Though the note sounds suicidal, prosecutors are sure Mr. Salinas's death was a homicide. Evidence shows he was suffocated somewhere outside his car, then put in the car and driven to the suburb. Security cameras caught images of his killers, a group the police say may number as many as six, leaving the scene in a black sport utility vehicle. Hair found in the victim's hands and the bruises suggest that he had struggled with his attackers.

The killing is the latest chapter in the saga of a once all-powerful family in the former ruling party whose story has become a slow-motion train wreck since President Salinas left office in December 1994.

A month later the economy collapsed, poisoning Carlos Salinas's legacy as a visionary modernizer. In 1999 Raúl Salinas was convicted of orchestrating the killing of a prominent politician during the election of 1994. Now, Enrique Salinas has been killed just before he was to face charges of money-laundering.

"Misterio," screamed the headline of El Gráfico on Thursday, while talk-radio hosts bantered about possible motives. Most went along with the theory of extortion that Mr. Navarrete proposed. Others raised the possibility of a political killing, even a crime of passion.

Raúl Trejo Delarbre, a professor who analyzes Mexican news, said the public fascination with the case was natural because it involved the Salinas de Gortari family. "It's a surname associated with an important chapter of Mexico's history, " he said, "but overall, as everyone knows, with strong accusations that have never been cleared up, and for this reason, with a family persecuted by bad luck."

It sounds lie he died hard.I think someone wanted him to "unburden himeslf" of some information,which he either didn't have or wouldn't give. Or,they just got carried waway in their intelligence gathering efforts a bit prematurely,henc the beating and asphyxiation via a plastic bag.

He was 52, a multimillionaire engineer with cash-flow problems, a divorced wife and three grown children, investigators said.

Just a typical drug kingpin. These people are almost glorified if not actually glorified in Mexico. Jefe de los Jefes, El Rey de los Cielos, and so on. All songs glorifying the violent greedy drug kingpins.

Mexicans made a big mistake --- they smirked thinking they would get rich being the drug selling country and the pathetic Americans were the losers for being the drug buying country --- but this whole thing has turned around very badly on them. They are now a big drug using country besides having the drug cartels rule over them.

Most of them imagine some kind of fantasy island type Mexican paradise --- something they see in tourist towns like Cancun and have no idea of the reality. Even visiting a border town without going into the hovels just south of town reveals very very little. It's almost unbelievable when you start really looking around --- people living in tiny shacks made of cardboard and discarded wooden pallets --- many abandoned teenage mothers already with several children. It's unbelievable what takes place just over the border on a daily basis.

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