Court Orders Hand-Over of Zedillo Bank Records

Obeying a historic ruling by Mexico’s Supreme Court, Finance Ministry officials Friday began preparing to turn over to Congress banking records related to President Ernesto Zedillo’s 1994 election campaign.

The ruling, handed down Thursday, marks the first time that the court has stepped in to resolve a dispute between Congress and a president. Until recent years, Zedillo’s party monopolized power in all three government branches.

“This is a historic decision,” Justice Olga Sanchez Cordero told reporters.

Zedillo had argued that bank secrecy laws prevented a hand-over of the documents, but he promptly ordered the Finance Ministry and National Banking and Securities Commission to comply. The administration has 30 working days to supply the information to the lower house of Congress, which is investigating a banking scandal. By then, the opposition-dominated Chamber of Deputies elected July 2 will have been sworn in.

The records are expected to reveal the relationship between the failed Banco Union and three campaigns by Zedillo’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, including his own and another that he ran.

Banco Union’s former chairman, Carlos Cabal Peniche, is in an Australian jail facing extradition to Mexico on fraud charges.

Political opponents have accused Zedillo and other candidates of accepting millions of dollars in contributions from Cabal and Banco Union and then leaving depositors and taxpayers to pick up the tab when the bank failed.

Beyond giving Congress the means to determine whether those charges are true, the ruling marked an important step in instituting checks and balances among what was once termed “the imperial presidency” and the other two branches of the Mexican government.

“For the first time, two branches of the federal [government] have disagreed and submitted to the decision of the Supreme Court,” said Justice Guillermo I. Ortiz Mayagoitia.

Zedillo was quick to take credit for that achievement, downplaying the fact that he lost the case and could soon face revelations that may besmirch his image.

“The first constitutional reform that this administration promoted was precisely to set a firm foundation for a genuinely independent judiciary better capable of fulfilling its responsibilities,” he recalled in a written statement. “That reform increased the power of the Supreme Court to resolve disputes among the branches of government.”

Members of Zedillo’s party, known by the initials PRI, have sometimes complained that he has put his own desire to be remembered as a democracy-building president above the interests of the party.

His statesmanlike acceptance nearly two months ago of the PRI’s first defeat in a presidential election since the party was formed seven decades ago rankled some members--especially because it came before the party’s candidate, Francisco Labastida, had publicly recognized the defeat.

In an apparent attempt to press for an end to the investigation of the banking scandal, PRI leaders issued a statement noting: “On receiving the information about the Banco Union trust funds, as the Supreme Court has ruled, the Chamber of Deputies will have all the elements necessary to conclude its audit of the Bank Savings Protection Fund,” which is similar to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in the United States.