Kidnaped Mexican Financier Makes Plea for Ransom
Kidnapers of financier Alfredo Harp Helu vowed in a published letter Thursday to execute the president of Mexico’s biggest bank if a ransom is not paid quickly.
“If you don’t pay the ransom you will know you have made a mistake . . . when the body is in front of you,” said the typed letter addressed to the board of directors of Banco Nacional de Mexico, known as Banamex.
The letter did not say how much ransom was being demanded.
The warning came with a second handwritten letter from Harp Helu that ended a monthlong public silence over the fate of the 50-year-old financier, whose abduction on March 14 rocked Mexico.
“Pay the ransom, my life is in danger,” Harp Helu pleaded in a letter to bank executives, which was written in black ink and accompanied by a photograph of the gaunt-looking and bearded hostage.
The letters and photograph were retrieved in a packet found off a Mexico City street by the newspaper Reforma, acting on an anonymous telephone call.
Harp Helu’s personal fortune has been estimated at as much as $1 billion.
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