13 July 2000. Thanks to EGM.
For full "computerized list of 2,300 questionable loans (source: http://200.15.46.52/listfobap.doc):"
http://cryptome.org/listfobap.doc (MS Word .doc, 1MB)http://cryptome.org/listfobap.zip (MS Word .doc Zipped, 131KB)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000712/wl/mexico_banks_dc_1.html
Wednesday July 12 6:18 PM ET
By David Monjaraz
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's leftist opposition party revealed a secret list of possibly illegal beneficiaries of a controversial $10 billion bailout of broke banks, and revealed a computerized list of 2,300 questionable loans [see links above] on Wednesday.
"Here you are going to find big loans to very well-known companies,'' Pablo Gomez, a legislator of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), said in a news conference where the party revealed the list.
The PRD aims to use the list to show that the taxpayer financed bank rescue -- which followed a sharp currency devaluation in 1994 -- helped bankers to recover defaults on illegal or crooked loans that never should have been given in the first place.
Under the rules of the bailout, which was supposed to help banks recover from an avalanche of defaults and soaring interest rates, beneficiaries must pay back the government for any loans covered in the rescue that are found to be dirty.
Canadian consultant Michael Mackey, contracted by Mexico's opposition-dominated chamber of deputies to audit the bank bail out, created the list of $1.5 billion in questionable loans.
Mackey turned the list over to the Bank Savings Protection Institute (IPAB), the government body in charge of the bank bailout is supposedly investigating the loans that Mackey's audit found questionable.
The list was also stored on a computer disk in Congress and each of Mexico's five biggest political parties was given a code. The disk could not be accessed unless all of the parties submitted their codes.
The five parties agreed to this mechanism so that no one could make political hay with the list during the political campaigns leading up to the July 2 presidential election.
But the PRD fought to publicize the list, accusing the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the center-right opposition National Action Party (PAN) of covering up business people linked to their parties.
The PAN turned the tables on the PRD in June, when then-presidential hopeful Vicente Fox -- who is now the president elect -- surrendered the PAN's code during a live, televised candidates' debate
With the gauntlet thrown down, all the other parties except the PRI turned in their codes as well. Fox's code turned out to be wrong, but was soon replaced with the real one.
With everyone but the now lame-duck PRI cooperating, PRD leaders felt they had the political license to hire a hacker to break into the diskette.
Gomez said at the news conference that questionable loans covered by the rescue operation included some to PRI-supporters including the well-known families Hank Gonzalez, Gutierrez Cortina and Santos de Hoyos.
The list also included names of former bankers who are already under criminal prosecution for fraud: Carlos Cabal Peniche of Cremi-Union, Jorge Lankenau of Confia, and Angel Isidoro Rodriguez of Banpais. All those banks are defunct or have been swallowed up by others.