Mexican Congress will investigate Fox

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The news keeps getting worse for former Mexican President Vicente Fox, currently on a book tour of the United States. It seems he will now be the subject of an ethics and corruption investigation to be carried out by Mexico’s Congress, according to media reports today. Fox has come under fire for the perceived wealth he accumulated during six years in office, though he insists his finances are open to the public.

According to Reforma (subscription required), two members of Fox’s own conservative National Action Party will be on the commission. And, in what is surely a bitter irony for Fox, the commission will be chaired by a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI: Fox ended the seven-decade reign of the notoriously corrupt PRI when he was elected in 2000.

Less than a year after his term as president expired, it seems every aspect of Fox’s personal life is coming under question, with El Universal’s front page taking up the matter of Fox’s ‘luxurious’ Hummer. It seems said Hummer, valued at $49,000, magically appeared in Mexico last year without the required paperwork and no official record of how it entered the country. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the losing leftist presidential candidate, said earlier this week that the Hummer had been seized by Mexican customs officials at the U.S. border last year and then handed over to Fox as a ‘gift.’

Update: Late Thursday afternoon, the lower house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies, voted to create the commission. It will be known by an incredibly unwieldy name: the Special Commission to Investigate the Accusations of Alleged Inappropriate Use of Public Office Within the Presidency of the Republic, During the Administration of Citizen Vicente Fox Quesada.

Posted by Héctor Tobar in Mexico City