U.S. Indicts Ex-Mexico Prosecutor in Drug Case

Mexico’s former No. 2 lawman has been charged by federal authorities with laundering more than $9 million in drug payoffs through a Houston bank, officials said Friday. The action was hailed as a major victory for U.S. and Mexican anti-drug forces.

Former Deputy Atty. Gen. Mario Ruiz Massieu was taken into custody late Thursday at his New Jersey home. He had been under house arrest there since 1995, first on a minor customs charge and then as he fought extradition to face charges in Mexico.

On Monday, a federal grand jury in Houston indicted him on 25 counts of laundering narcotics proceeds, aiding racketeering and conspiring with drug traffickers.

The indictment alleges that Ruiz Massieu had an associate make cash deposits ranging from $40,000 to $800,000 into his bank accounts at Texas Commerce Bank in Houston during 1994 and 1995. Most of the deposits consisted of $20 bills bundled in rubber bands, stuffed into suitcases and delivered every few weeks--hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time.

The deposits were made during and immediately after Ruiz Massieu’s tenure as a senior law enforcement official in the administration of Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Mexican Atty. Gen. Jorge Madrazo Cuellar on Friday welcomed the news of Ruiz Massieu’s indictment, saying Mexico had collaborated with the U.S. government in building the case.

“This represents an important step against impunity,” Madrazo said in a statement.

U.S. Customs Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement that the charges show “the enormous corrupting power of drug money. [Ruiz Massieu] was a top official who violated the public trust. There is no worse crime than this for law enforcement officials.”

Ruiz Massieu’s lawyer, Cathy Fleming, called the charges “politically motivated” and said her client intends to plead not guilty.

“If this is being called a major victory by our anti-drug forces, then we are certainly barking up the wrong tree,” Fleming said. “My client is disappointed that he continues to be charged with matters that he has to go demonstrate are false.”

At a hearing in Newark, N.J., on Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel Pisano set bail at $500,000. Ruiz Massieu and his wife co-signed the bond, which allows him to return to his rented house in a Newark suburb. No date has been set for his arraignment in Houston.

Massieu’s arrest came after years of frustrated attempts by U.S. and Mexican officials to bring him to trial for alleged involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering.

He was first arrested by Customs officials at Newark International Airport in 1995, on his way to Spain with $45,000 of undeclared cash in his briefcase. He had fled Mexico amid charges of taking payoffs from one of the country’s most notorious drug traffickers when he headed Mexico’s anti-drug effort, and of obstructing the investigation into the 1994 assassination of his brother, Francisco Ruiz Massieu, a top official of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Mexican prosecutors contend that Mario Ruiz Massieu was trying to protect the man convicted in January of masterminding that murder, Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother of Mexico’s former president.

Raul Salinas also is believed to have profited from the drug trade. Swiss authorities have identified about $115 million that they say is protection money paid to him. He is being held in a Mexican jail.

The U.S. charges connected with Ruiz Massieu’s undeclared cash were dismissed soon after they were filed. But Ruiz Massieu has been under court-ordered house arrest ever since, fighting deportation proceedings against him by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He wears an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor his movements and is forbidden to leave the premises much of the time.

An immigration court has been considering a State Department request to have Ruiz Massieu deported to Mexico because his presence in the United States would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Russ Bergeron said Friday.

Mexico has been seeking to have Ruiz Massieu returned there to face other charges stemming from its own narcotics and bribery probe, and the Clinton administration has sought to cooperate with the Mexican request. Separately, Ruiz Massieu has been seeking asylum status that would allow him to remain in the United States.

The administration’s only legal victory against Ruiz Massieu before this week came in a civil proceeding. In March 1997, a jury in Houston upheld the U.S. government’s seizure of millions of dollars in Ruiz Massieu’s accounts. Jurors accepted testimony by U.S. law enforcement officials that the money came from bribes Ruiz Massieu took in return for protecting major Mexican drug trafficker Amado Carrillo Fuentes and the tons of cocaine transshipped by the late drug lord’s cartel into the United States each year.

Officials also testified that Ruiz Massieu had sabotaged international efforts to capture Juan Garcia Abrego, another top Mexican drug lord. Garcia Abrego was later captured, deported to the United States and sentenced in 1997 to 11 life terms. He is in a Texas prison.

The criminal case against Ruiz Massieu began to fall into place last year, officials said, when a former senior Mexican police official, Adrian Carrera Fuentes, told a federal grand jury in Houston that he had turned over millions of dollars in drug bribes to Ruiz Massieu. The bribes--consisting of U.S. currency stuffed into two suitcases--were delivered to Ruiz Massieu in a Mexico City parking lot.

Federal officials on Friday defended the time it took to bring the charges against Ruiz Massieu.

“We needed a little bit more information, to be honest,” said Shelley Altenstadter, special agent in charge for U.S. Customs. “And we now have it.”

Francisco Molina, Mexico’s former top drug prosecutor and now a senator for the opposition National Action Party, said in an interview that Ruiz Massieu’s arrest “shows clearly what can be done with international cooperation.”

Referring to Ruiz Massieu’s close links with the Salinas family, Molina added: “Certainly, his political weight and his influence could have made him untouchable. This demonstrates that there are no untouchable people. This is a good message--that any government official potentially can be subjected to prosecution.”

Schrader reported from Washington and Smith from Mexico City. Times staff writer Lianne Hart in Houston contributed to this report.