The World : Mexico Fraud Probe Told

Mexico has formed a special congressional commission to investigate charges by the powerful oil workers union that the governor of Mexico state embezzled $49 million from the government oil monopoly, Pexem, when he headed it. The union alleges that Mario Ramon Beteta, who was appointed director of Pemex in 1982 by President Miguel de la Madrid as part of an anti-corruption drive, personally benefitted from the sale of two Yugoslav repair ships to the oil company. Beteta, who left Pemex at the end of 1986 to become governor and remains a close ally of De la Madrid and of President-elect Carlos Salinas de Gortari, has called the charges “baseless slander.”