THE SPREADING SCANDAL

By Kevin Fedarko

Like his princely predecessors, Carlos Salinas de Gortari was accustomed to the sycophantic treatment accorded Presidents--and former Presidents--of Mexico. So it must have come as a shock when a visitor sent ``as a courtesy'' by current President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon showed up unannounced at Salinas' Mexico City house last Tuesday morning and began ringing the front doorbell. The high-level official, laden with documents, tapes and videos, was bringing evidence that a dramatic new lead had surfaced in the investigation into the murder of one of Mexico's most powerful politicians, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, who was gunned down last September outside a Mexico City hotel.

Carlos Salinas ought to have been pleased to learn of the breakthrough in capturing the alleged ``intellectual author'' of the assassination. Until, that is, the ex-President learned that agents were converging on the house of the murdered man's former wife, Carlos Salinas' sister Adriana, to arrest the suspect: the ex-President's older brother, Raul.

The normally controlled Salinas lost his temper. He screamed and yelled, then attempted to reach the new President by phone. Zedillo was not answering. Salinas tried ringing lower-level officials in a frantic bid to negotiate. A few called back, but none could help. Finally, in desperation, he dispatched several members of his military guard to his sister's house. Halfway there, the guards were halted on orders of Defense Secretary Enrique Cervantes, who had radioed for them to be stopped.

If the guards had completed their mission, they would have arrived to find a squad of 30 federal police agents preparing to enter Adriana Salinas' house and arrest Raul, 48. He put up no resistance, and by 2:30 p.m. the officers had hauled him off to a maximum-security prison outside Mexico City.

Minutes later, Salinas broke with a long-standing tradition that requires former Presidents to refrain from publicly criticizing their successors, and telephoned a popular pro-government news program to issue an emotional appeal. Saying nothing about his brother, he denounced the Zedillo government for the ``errors of December,'' an unmistakable reference to his successor's disastrous peso devaluation, which sent the economy into a tailspin. While Salinas' statement transfixed Mexicans with its breach of political decorum, it did little to restore the reputation of the former President.

Nor did subsequent events. By Tuesday night, Mexico City motorists were driving past Salinas' house honking their car horns and hollering, ``Lock him up! Throw him in jail!'' On Wednesday, Salinas formally withdrew his now hopeless bid to preside over the new World Trade Organization, relinquishing a cherished ambition to become an international economic czar. And on Friday, in an act that summed up his political decline, Salinas fell back on a tactic normally reserved for those who have no other leverage: the former President began a fast, temporarily called it off and then resumed it.

For Carlos Salinas, news of the arrest of his brother only further diminished the already fading legacy of a President who had expected history to applaud him for transforming Mexico's state-run economy into a free-market wonder--but who was now widely blamed for the crippling financial crisis. For a country where family and political ties have long been held sacrosanct, Zedillo's willingness to slash those ties and affirm the primacy of law came as a bold and welcome attempt to end the old ways. ``Let it be clear,'' declared the President on Thursday. ``Nobody can be above the law. In Mexico, impunity has ended.'' The assassination last year of Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and the slaying of Ruiz Massieu, the ruling party's secretary-general, were the first high-level political murders in Mexico in more than six decades. They deeply shook the confidence of not only Mexican citizens but also the foreign investors who were financing the country's economic boom. Investigations under Salinas seemed to go nowhere, leaving skeptical citizens convinced the P.R.I. was covering up a political conspiracy. During his campaign, Zedillo vowed to get to the bottom of the crimes, even if leads pointed to the highest levels of government.

As a sign of his seriousness, Zedillo handpicked an unorthodox Attorney General to pursue the cases: Antonio Lozano Gracia, the first opposition- party member ever to serve in a P.R.I. Cabinet. Two weeks ago, on Feb. 24, Lozano's special prosecutor, Pablo Chapa Bezanilla, revealed the first fruits of his inquiry. Othon Cortez Vazquez, a P.R.I. chauffeur, bodyguard and street operative, was arrested and charged with being the second gunman in the assassination of Colosio, who was shot on March 23 while campaigning in a Tijuana suburb.

That arrest reignited suspicion that Colosio could not have been killed by a lone psychopath, as the two inquiries conducted under Salinas had found. After tabling important evidence and dismissing conflicts of interest, Salinas' investigators had concluded that the murder was the work of a single man, Mario Aburto Martinez, a factory worker who was arrested at the scene, convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Although there is no proof that the Salinas administration tried to hide evidence, the investigation provoked derision and strengthened the conviction that a cover-up was under way.

The second break came last week, when special prosecutor Chapa called in journalists and read them an 11-page statement of charges attempting to link Raul Salinas to the assassination of Ruiz Massieu. The plot stretched back to early 1994, when two prospective assassins were paid $88,000, then absconded with the cash. After at least one other unsuccessful attempt, the conspirators finally got their man when Daniel Aguilar Trevino, the alleged gunman, shot Ruiz Massieu in his Buick Century as he left a breakfast with fellow P.R.I. members in downtown Mexico City.

Fourteen suspects were already in custody for the crime, so Chapa astonished the journalists with his final charge. The former President's brother Raul, he said, had ``co-authored'' the crime with another politician, who had previously been identified as the sole mastermind of the killing. The charges were doubly shocking given the personal links between the two: Raul's sister was once married to Ruiz Massieu and Raul is godfather to the couple's daughter.

The original author of the crime was allegedly Manuel Munoz Rocha, a P.R.I. legislator from the state of Tamaulipas whose ties to Raul Salinas go back to their university days. Ever since he was charged last fall with organizing the murder, Munoz Rocha has eluded an international manhunt, and some investigators believe he may be dead. His motive was thought to be political: the legislator allegedly told associates that his ambitions to become a state governor had been thwarted by Ruiz Massieu. Munoz Rocha appeared to belong to a group of P.R.I. hacks known as the ``dinosaurs,'' old-timers wedded to the party's authoritarian ways whose power was threatened by Salinas' push for economic and political reforms--a push that both Colosio and Ruiz Massieu had committed themselves to advancing.

Chapa called the relationship between Munoz Rocha and Raul Salinas ``close'' and cited phone records and testimony of witnesses to document their ``discreet but consistent'' contact before and after the murder. Chapa said Munoz Rocha made two calls from a hideout in the suburb of Pachuca afterward; the first was to Raul Salinas. Before he disappeared in Pachuca on Sept. 29, Munoz Rocha visited the home of Raul Salinas. Finally, Chapa added, Munoz Rocha had told his secretary that Raul Salinas ordered and financed the murder.

One question the prosecutor did not answer was Raul's motive for the crime. Friends and some government officials intimate that if Raul Salinas is guilty, his involvement may stem less from politics than from personal animus and the clash between powerful egos. Government sources say Raul, who has lived in the shadow of his younger brother ever since their father began grooming Carlos for national politics, deeply resented his hard-driving, often arrogant former brother-in-law. Ruiz Massieu was supposed to have sometimes been openly disdainful of Raul. The hostility between the two men may have deepened in recent years with Ruiz Massieu's attempt to damage business dealings by Raul. The President's brother was a controversial figure who held high government posts, including membership on the P.R.I.'s executive committee, and has long been accused of shady practices, including diversion of public funds for his own use. There are also suggestions, as yet unproved, that each man knew about the illicit dealings of the other; whoever emerged on top of the postelection pile would be in a position to exploit his information to destroy his rival. When Ruiz Massieu was killed, he was the No. 2 official in the P.R.I. and slated to become party leader in the Chamber of Deputies.

By week's end Chapa had still not publicly produced evidence actually linking Raul Salinas to the accused gunman or to the web of alleged conspirators jailed by the previous special prosecutor. He was none other than Ruiz Massieu's brother Mario. Mario Ruiz Massieu had quit his post as Deputy Attorney General and the P.R.I. last November, claiming the party was hindering his investigation. But on Wednesday Chapa declared that his team had found ``errors'' in Mario Ruiz Massieu's investigation, suggesting that he had helped cover up Raul's role in the case. The murdered politician's brother spent nearly seven hours Thursday being grilled by investigators regarding possible criminal omissions in his inquiry. Afterward, Mario Ruiz Massieu declared it ``an atrocity to think that I would hide information to benefit the murderer of my brother.'' On Friday night Ruiz Massieu was arrested at Newark International Airport.

Some observers believe prosecutors are now investigating a possible thread linking the two assassinations: a complex conspiracy within the ruling party to prevent further reform at the national level. Whether or not that theory is ever proved, President Zedillo has already done more than look honest. In a party where back-room players call many of the shots, he has served notice that he is no pushover for the powers that be in the P.R.I. In a system where acting Presidents refrain from investigating the crimes of their predecessors as a guarantee that their own peccadilloes will not fall under scrutiny, he has taken on the man who personally picked him to don the presidential sash. Now Mexicans hope that the inroads Zedillo has made can be broadened into a full-scale reform of their political, judicial and social system.

By calculation or lucky timing, a President battered since he took office for his management of the economic crisis has found a way to shake up the party that has ruled Mexico for 66 years, helped break its history of high-handed rule and improved his own image. Although the revelations sent the peso skidding to an all-time low on Friday, Zedillo's willingness to back the inquiry is proving popular with Mexicans long skeptical that promises of reform will ever be fulfilled. In a poll published on Thursday, 68% said they trust Zedillo more now that Raul Salinas is in jail.

Yet the President must tread carefully. While Zedillo's own distance from the political Old Guard makes it easier for him to reform the system, many Mexicans wonder if he is too naive to understand the risks involved in taking on the men in the shadows. Colosio and Ruiz Massieu may have been killed, after all, simply for threatening to reduce the power of the mighty. Zedillo has already gone beyond that by threatening to punish the mighty.

--Reported by Laura Lopez/Mexico City and Elaine Shannon/Washington

With reporting by LAURA LOPEZ/MEXICO CITY AND ELAINE SHANNON/WASHINGTON