Ex-Governor of Veracruz Jailed on Corruption Charges

Just three weeks after he resigned from this nation’s ruling party, Dante Delgado, a former Veracruz governor, was in jail Wednesday, charged with illegally amassing a $57-million fortune while chief executive of Mexico’s oil-rich Gulf coast state.

Authorities described the embezzlement and influence-peddling charges against the former ruling-party stalwart as dramatic proof of the Mexican government’s crackdown on official corruption. That campaign has yielded a steady stream of criminal cases against lower-level current and former officials since President Ernesto Zedillo took office two years ago.

But the charges against Delgado also come amid a rash of defections from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Political analysts said the former governor’s arrest at his home in Mexico City’s posh Pedregal district Tuesday night may have a chilling effect on future resignations from a ruling party in crisis.

The PRI, which has held Mexico’s federal government since 1929, has been rocked by three other high-profile defections in the last month and a series of state and local election defeats in the last two years. Among the resignations were two federal lawmakers who announced that they were leaving the PRI to run for office on opposition tickets next year in Cuernavaca and Campeche.

“This is a punishment that is meant to serve as an example for all those who may be thinking about leaving the PRI,” said federal legislator Alejandro Rojas Diaz-Duran, who resigned from the party the same day Delgado quit.

“The PRI cannot stand by with their arms crossed. There are many high-level PRI-istas who want to leave the party.”

Facing a 1997 election year in which the lower house of Congress and almost one-third of the nation’s state and local governments will be decided, the PRI replaced party President Santiago Onate on Sunday with Humberto Roque Villanueva.

Roque Villanueva is an astute politician who heads the PRI’s congressional delegation in the Chamber of Deputies, and analysts said the move was partly meant to stop the hemorrhaging in the party’s ranks.

Party sources and government officials denied Wednesday that there was a link between Delgado’s arrest and his resignation from the PRI.

The comptroller’s office said the charges were filed against Delgado “after an investigation that required the participation of specialists in many areas--such as auditors and attorneys.” It said the case dates to Nov. 24, 1993.

But the former governor, who quit the PRI to form a new opposition group called Convergence for Democracy, asserted in interviews published in Mexico City late last month that the probe of his personal and official finances was politically motivated--a direct result of his decision to leave the PRI after 29 years.

Just days after his Nov. 27 resignation, Mexico’s federal comptroller’s office confirmed for the first time that Delgado was under investigation for illegal enrichment during his four years as Veracruz’s governor, from 1988 to 1992.

Among the charges now pending against him are embezzlement, abuse of authority and influence peddling.

Two of his former state Cabinet ministers were also charged with financial wrongdoing.

One charge asserts that Delgado sold land that had been donated to the state by Mexico’s oil monopoly to relatives and friends for less than a third of its fair-market value. The land was in a Veracruz tourist area.