Ex-Oil Official Wanted in Mexico Tries to Surrender

The former director of Mexico’s state oil monopoly, a fugitive in the country’s most politically charged corruption scandal, walked into a Texas courtroom and offered to surrender Monday, saying he could get a fairer hearing in the United States than at home.

Five hours later he walked away free, thanks to confusion over whether Mexico had ever asked for his arrest.

Rogelio Montemayor has been wanted since May 3, when the Mexican government charged him and three former associates with embezzlement and misuse of public funds. They were accused of diverting about $170 million from the company, Pemex, to the failed 2000 presidential campaign of the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

The case, known as “Pemexgate,” is President Vicente Fox’s biggest corruption probe since his election two years ago ended the PRI’s 71-year rule. It is the first major test of Fox’s campaign pledge to root out government corruption and punish those responsible for past misdeeds.

But Monday’s surprise maneuver by the high-profile suspect embarrassed the Fox government and caught U.S. officials off guard.

The 54-year-old PRI operative showed up at federal district court in Houston, trying to force an extradition battle against Mexican prosecutors. His lawyer filed a motion claiming the charges “are not only political, they are also false.”

FBI agents and federal marshals refused to arrest Montemayor, however, saying they had no such request from Mexico. Mexican officials insisted that they had issued one May 21..

“We told [U.S. authorities] that if anything should come up, if they have a warrant, please give us a call and we’d come back down,” said Mike DeGeurin, Montemayor’s Houston lawyer.

Once that happens, Mexican prosecutors will have to go before a U.S. federal judge to show cause why Montemayor should be sent home for trial. The defense motion argues that he “cannot be extradited for a politically motivated prosecution.”

“If there is no probable cause shown here, we believe the charges in Mexico will fall,” DeGeurin said.

The former Pemex executives are accused of funneling company money to the Pemex oil workers union and then to PRI candidate Francisco Labastida’s campaign.

Pemex is Mexico’s biggest moneymaker, one of the world’s largest oil companies and the leading source of Mexican government revenue.

The Pemex union was among the PRI’s most important sources of votes and financing for decades. The PRI, founded in 1929, was akin to a branch of government. Public officials were forced to join, and the dividing line between its budget and that of the government was vague.

Montemayor, a former governor of Coahuila state with no background in the oil business, was appointed to lead the company in 1999. In a written statement, the former executive insisted that his decisions at Pemex “were at all times made following the law.”

“My resolve is to prove my innocence and the innocence of those who worked with me,” Montemayor declared. He said he feared for his safety in Mexico because officials there had created “a lynch mob environment” that endangered his relatives, who he says have been harassed.

The former executive was in the United States at the time the charges were filed. Mexican police have since searched his home.

“We are going to get to the bottom of this no matter what the consequences,” Fox said last week.

Fox’s anti-corruption campaign has shown few results. Early in his term, officials twice announced that they had unearthed tens of millions of dollars in PRI government salary payments to people who performed no work--only to be disproved. Some political analysts suspect that the Pemex case, based on the word of two unidentified witnesses, is shaky.

“If this case doesn’t stand up, it’s going to cost Fox dearly in terms of credibility,” said Mexican political scientist Alfonso Zarate.

It has already cost him in Congress, where the PRI holds a plurality in both houses and has blocked much of the president’s reform agenda.

“A conviction will enhance Fox’s standing with the public but won’t solve his problem in Congress,” said George W. Grayson, a Mexico specialist at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.