Bank’s Closure Led to Undoing of Mexican Justice Ministry Aide

A top aide to the attorney general is found slumped over the wheel of his car, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His corruption-busting boss is forced to admit that his right-hand man had secretly stashed a $700,000 fortune. In a suicide note, the aide acknowledges that the money “is difficult to explain.”

The suicide Wednesday of Juan Manuel Izabal shocked even Mexicans accustomed to the frequent drug payoff scandals that have rocked the Justice Ministry. It was especially damaging to Atty. Gen. Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, one of the most trusted figures of U.S. anti-narcotics officials, who has tried to implement broad anti-corruption programs.

Initial investigations Thursday suggested that Izabal’s fortune came from unscrupulous deals, not narcotics. But commentators said the scandal showed that corruption is so profound in Mexico that it frustrates even top officials in the government of President Ernesto Zedillo who are dedicated to combating it.

“The president has had the will to combat corruption. But at the end of his six years [in office], you see he hasn’t been able to,” said Francisco Molina, a former top drug official who is now a senator for the opposition National Action Party, or PAN.

Izabal, the top administrative official in the Justice Ministry, was found dead in his black Chevrolet Suburban early Wednesday, just a few blocks from his home in southern Mexico City.

At first, the sensational death of such a prominent figure raised speculation of an assassination. But late Wednesday, Madrazo told a news conference that investigators had found two suicide notes in Izabal’s clothes. In one, the official acknowledged to his wife that he had stockpiled a large amount of money.

The money, Izabal wrote, was from business deals, not drugs. But, suggesting that a scandal was about to break, he wrote: “I don’t want you or the children to pass through this hell.”

The suicide note was just one clue that emerged Wednesday in what appeared to be the biggest corruption scandal in the Justice Ministry since the 1997 arrest of Mexico’s anti-drug czar, Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, on charges of aiding narcotics kingpins.

Officials first got wind Tuesday night of the impending scandal, Madrazo said. Local Citibank officials had called him requesting an urgent meeting about a senior official’s bank account, he said. Madrazo gave the bankers a noon appointment the next day and immediately began investigating which of his employees were clients of the bank.

“The administrative officer [Izabal] knew about this,” Madrazo said.

The next morning, Izabal’s body was discovered, shot once in the head, with a .380-caliber Beretta pistol in his hand.

Hours later, the bankers revealed what had driven Izabal to desperation.

Recently, the bank had sent Izabal three notices asking him to claim his safe deposit box from a Citibank branch that was scheduled to close, the officials said, according to Madrazo. When Izabal didn’t respond, the officials opened the box.

Inside, they found a fortune: $700,000 in U.S. and Mexican money, Madrazo said.

On Tuesday morning, Izabal finally turned up at the bank to claim the box, Madrazo said. But it was too late: Bank officials told him they had decided to inform the Justice Ministry about the contents.

In the suicide note to his wife, Izabal said: “You are going to learn about things you don’t know that will disappoint you. Forgive me. The safe deposit boxes don’t just have documents, as I told you; there is also money that is difficult to explain. It’s the result of business deals that I have done, but that would not be understood, given my position as a civil servant. It’s not from narcos or anything like that, but I didn’t declare it, and the circumstances have me against the wall.”

Authorities said Thursday that they still didn’t know where Izabal had obtained his fortune. Madrazo said he “could not rule out” that the money was from traffickers but suggested that was unlikely. Other officials noted that the dead aide didn’t handle narcotics investigations. Instead, he was responsible for a wide range of administrative matters, ranging from purchases of equipment to the custodianship of money and property seized from traffickers.

Madrazo immediately ordered an investigation of Izabal and other senior officers. The attorney general said he had been blindsided by the apparent corruption.

“I never had any evidence or indications that Mr. Izabal was involved in any illicit act,” Madrazo said. He said he was devastated by the news about an aide who had worked closely with him for the last nine years, in the Justice Ministry and previously for Mexico’s human rights commission.

“From the human point of view, I feel great pain,” Madrazo said. “But also, I feel very worried about the circumstances that surround this death.”

Other justice officials backed up Madrazo’s assessment, saying Izabal appeared to live within his means and was not ostentatious. “There was no gossip about him, nothing,” said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity. In addition, he said, outside audits of the ministry’s purchases showed no irregularities.

Nonetheless, the attorney general came under attack Thursday for being unaware of a corruption scandal taking shape right under his nose.

“If the attorney general doesn’t even know about the activities of his closest collaborators, how is he going to know about the whereabouts and businesses of organized-crime groups?” demanded an editorial in the Mexico City daily Reforma. It suggested Madrazo might be forced to resign.

The senior justice official who spoke on condition of anonymity acknowledged that the scandal was “a real blow.” While the attorney general had worked hard to clean up the ministry, he said, he would now be regarded with suspicion. “This has dirtied the image of the institution,” he said.

In fact, Madrazo has instituted broad programs to perform background checks on anti-drug officials and subject them to polygraph tests. Izabal, as an administrative employee, wasn’t subject to such checks. Madrazo said the scandal shows that the anti-corruption program in the ministry must be expanded.

Molina, the PAN senator, noted the fragility of the Justice Ministry, often penetrated by drug traffickers and others offering bribes to ministry employees.

“Our war,” he said, “is within and without.”