Tape revives Mexican conspiracy theory
MEXICO CITY
Recording backs losing presidential candidate's claim of plot against him
Claims by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that a powerful cabal of politicians and the mega-wealthy have conspired to rob him of this summer's presidential election have long been dismissed by his critics as paranoia.
But the interrogation of a real estate developer, taped two years ago in Cuba and broadcast here Friday on a radio program, might well confirm the notion that just because a man could be paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get him.
On the tape, jailed businessman Carlos Ahumada alleges that several Mexican Cabinet ministers, a powerful senator from President Vicente Fox's party and former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari engineered the February 2004 release of other videotapes showing the developer bribing senior aides to Lopez Obrador.
"It's the fight for 2006, that's what they won," Carlos Ahumada, a native of Argentina who had been active in Mexico City construction, says on the tape. "I mean, they practically pulled Andres Manuel out of the presidential race."
Most of the men accused of planning the bribery scandal denied Friday that there was any such conspiracy.
The 2004 bribery scandal, combined with a separate criminal prosecution that would have disqualified Lopez Obrador from running, nearly derailed his quest for the presidency.
The Fox administration shelved the federal prosecution, involving the illegal building of a road in Mexico City while Lopez Obrador was mayor, after hundreds of thousands of people marched in protest against it.
Lopez Obrador did run. Now, he's challenging official results that show him losing by a wafer-thin margin to conservative Felipe Calderon of Fox's National Action Party.
Mexico City protest
Lopez Obrador's supporters have all but paralyzed central Mexico City in protest as a federal tribunal decides the election, which will be resolved by the end of the month.
"This confirms what Andres has been saying all along," said Rafael Hernandez Nava, a city legislator for Lopez Obrador's party, at a sit-in in downtown Mexico City. "It was a plot conjured up by (Diego) Fernandez de Cevallos (a National Action senator), by Salinas and Fox."
"It's a plot by the same rich people in this country who have always opposed Andres."
The 2004 bribery videotapes show Lopez Obrador allies Rene Bejarano and Carlos Imaz taking large amounts of cash from Ahumada, presumably in return for favors on his development projects in the Mexican capital. A separate tape shows Mexico City's finance chief gambling large sums of money at a Las Vegas casino.
An unsuspecting Bejarano was ambushed with the video he's in on a politically slanted Mexico City talk show in which the host interviews senior officials and other guests dressed as a circus clown.
While defending Bejarano and the others, Lopez Obrador and Mexico City officials had long pointed to political enemies, including Salinas, as likely behind the public release of the bribery videos.
On the newly released recording, Ahumada claims that the effort to make the bribery public went "to the highest level. The interior minister and the attorney general were aware of this from the beginning."
Ahumada tells interrogators that his lawyer, Juan Collado, worked in tandem with Fernandez de Cevallos in reviewing the bribery tapes and plotting how to make them public. He suggests that Salinas, whose family Collado has also represented in legal matters, was involved.
Asked for $30 million
He had originally asked for $30 million in financing for his businesses in exchange for the tapes, Ahumada said in the interrogation. But he settled for what he termed "official protection" for himself and his family and the chance to win government contracts in the future.
"Its difficult for me to believe that the president didn't know, in a matter of this magnitude," Ahumada says of Fox. "Do you think the government secretary and the attorney general knew, and not the president?"
Fernandez de Cevallos, a prominent lawyer who was his party's presidential candidate in 1994, denied any wrongdoing. He said he advised Ahumado as a lawyer — pro bono — on what to do with the tapes and how to defend himself in problems with the city government.
He said he had no contact with Salinas about the tapes.
"He never gave me a single video," Fernandez told W Radio, the network that broke the story. Fernandez said he had all his dealings with Ahumada strictly documented.
Santiago Creel, interior minister at the time the bribery scandal broke, denied knowing or dealing with Ahumada in a written statement Friday.
"Neither did I know of the existence of the videos to which he refers before they were disseminated by the mass media," Creel said in a statement.
Saying he wouldn't lend himself to the "game of those who try to obtain political advantage through slander or manipulation," Creel said he'd make no further comment on the matter.
Rafael Macedo de la Concha, the attorney general at the time of the scandal, resigned last year when the charges against Lopez Obrador were shelved.
But the attorney general's office had "no official comment at this moment," spokesman Jose Luis Manjarrez said. Macedo de la Concha, currently military attache in Mexico's embassy in Rome, was unlikely to comment, the spokesman said.
A presidential spokesman declined to discuss the allegations Friday, telling a news conference that officials "weren't afraid" of their impact.
Lopez Obrador's representatives said they would present the tape to the election tribunal, called the Trife, as further evidence of the fraud they said was perpetrated against him.
A hovering presence
Though imprisoned on various charges, Ahumada has been something of a hovering presence throughout this year's bitter election season. Many people suspected — and not a few feared — that new incriminating videos would appear in time to influence against Lopez Obrador.
Indeed, Ahumada announced new videos implicating other Lopez Obrador allies would be released in early June.
Those plans changed a few days later when gunmen allegedly shot up the car in which his wife and children were riding in a posh Mexico City neighborhood.
Police investigators said the shooting, in which no one was injured, appeared to be staged.
No charges were filed, and the investigation was dropped. No further bribery videos appeared. And Ahumada faded from public interest.
Until Friday.
dqalthaus@yahoo.com;
marionlloyd@gmail.com
Recording backs losing presidential candidate's claim of plot against him
Claims by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that a powerful cabal of politicians and the mega-wealthy have conspired to rob him of this summer's presidential election have long been dismissed by his critics as paranoia.
But the interrogation of a real estate developer, taped two years ago in Cuba and broadcast here Friday on a radio program, might well confirm the notion that just because a man could be paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get him.
On the tape, jailed businessman Carlos Ahumada alleges that several Mexican Cabinet ministers, a powerful senator from President Vicente Fox's party and former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari engineered the February 2004 release of other videotapes showing the developer bribing senior aides to Lopez Obrador.
"It's the fight for 2006, that's what they won," Carlos Ahumada, a native of Argentina who had been active in Mexico City construction, says on the tape. "I mean, they practically pulled Andres Manuel out of the presidential race."
Most of the men accused of planning the bribery scandal denied Friday that there was any such conspiracy.
The 2004 bribery scandal, combined with a separate criminal prosecution that would have disqualified Lopez Obrador from running, nearly derailed his quest for the presidency.
The Fox administration shelved the federal prosecution, involving the illegal building of a road in Mexico City while Lopez Obrador was mayor, after hundreds of thousands of people marched in protest against it.
Lopez Obrador did run. Now, he's challenging official results that show him losing by a wafer-thin margin to conservative Felipe Calderon of Fox's National Action Party.
Mexico City protest
Lopez Obrador's supporters have all but paralyzed central Mexico City in protest as a federal tribunal decides the election, which will be resolved by the end of the month.
"This confirms what Andres has been saying all along," said Rafael Hernandez Nava, a city legislator for Lopez Obrador's party, at a sit-in in downtown Mexico City. "It was a plot conjured up by (Diego) Fernandez de Cevallos (a National Action senator), by Salinas and Fox."
"It's a plot by the same rich people in this country who have always opposed Andres."
The 2004 bribery videotapes show Lopez Obrador allies Rene Bejarano and Carlos Imaz taking large amounts of cash from Ahumada, presumably in return for favors on his development projects in the Mexican capital. A separate tape shows Mexico City's finance chief gambling large sums of money at a Las Vegas casino.
An unsuspecting Bejarano was ambushed with the video he's in on a politically slanted Mexico City talk show in which the host interviews senior officials and other guests dressed as a circus clown.
While defending Bejarano and the others, Lopez Obrador and Mexico City officials had long pointed to political enemies, including Salinas, as likely behind the public release of the bribery videos.
On the newly released recording, Ahumada claims that the effort to make the bribery public went "to the highest level. The interior minister and the attorney general were aware of this from the beginning."
Ahumada tells interrogators that his lawyer, Juan Collado, worked in tandem with Fernandez de Cevallos in reviewing the bribery tapes and plotting how to make them public. He suggests that Salinas, whose family Collado has also represented in legal matters, was involved.
Asked for $30 million
He had originally asked for $30 million in financing for his businesses in exchange for the tapes, Ahumada said in the interrogation. But he settled for what he termed "official protection" for himself and his family and the chance to win government contracts in the future.
"Its difficult for me to believe that the president didn't know, in a matter of this magnitude," Ahumada says of Fox. "Do you think the government secretary and the attorney general knew, and not the president?"
Fernandez de Cevallos, a prominent lawyer who was his party's presidential candidate in 1994, denied any wrongdoing. He said he advised Ahumado as a lawyer — pro bono — on what to do with the tapes and how to defend himself in problems with the city government.
He said he had no contact with Salinas about the tapes.
"He never gave me a single video," Fernandez told W Radio, the network that broke the story. Fernandez said he had all his dealings with Ahumada strictly documented.
Santiago Creel, interior minister at the time the bribery scandal broke, denied knowing or dealing with Ahumada in a written statement Friday.
"Neither did I know of the existence of the videos to which he refers before they were disseminated by the mass media," Creel said in a statement.
Saying he wouldn't lend himself to the "game of those who try to obtain political advantage through slander or manipulation," Creel said he'd make no further comment on the matter.
Rafael Macedo de la Concha, the attorney general at the time of the scandal, resigned last year when the charges against Lopez Obrador were shelved.
But the attorney general's office had "no official comment at this moment," spokesman Jose Luis Manjarrez said. Macedo de la Concha, currently military attache in Mexico's embassy in Rome, was unlikely to comment, the spokesman said.
A presidential spokesman declined to discuss the allegations Friday, telling a news conference that officials "weren't afraid" of their impact.
Lopez Obrador's representatives said they would present the tape to the election tribunal, called the Trife, as further evidence of the fraud they said was perpetrated against him.
A hovering presence
Though imprisoned on various charges, Ahumada has been something of a hovering presence throughout this year's bitter election season. Many people suspected — and not a few feared — that new incriminating videos would appear in time to influence against Lopez Obrador.
Indeed, Ahumada announced new videos implicating other Lopez Obrador allies would be released in early June.
Those plans changed a few days later when gunmen allegedly shot up the car in which his wife and children were riding in a posh Mexico City neighborhood.
Police investigators said the shooting, in which no one was injured, appeared to be staged.
No charges were filed, and the investigation was dropped. No further bribery videos appeared. And Ahumada faded from public interest.
Until Friday.
dqalthaus@yahoo.com;
marionlloyd@gmail.com
posted by Alice at
Sunday, August 20, 2006
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