The Narco News Bulletin

"The name of our country is América"

-- Simón Bolívar

July 12, 2000

A Narco News Global Alert

Hackers Crack The Code

But FOBAPROA List on Canadian Auditor's CD Still Hides 90-percent of the Money Trail

Translated from Mexican News Reports Published on Wednesday Afternoon

Narco News Analysis Below

CNI en Línea: The Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) branch of the legislature opened the CD-Rom on Tuesday night that contains information about the "reportable" transactions of the Bank Savings Protection Fund (FOBAPROA), an action that legislators of the PRI and PAN parties called illegal, without validity or credibility.

The PRD whip, Pablo Gómez clarified that the information is "presumably" the same delivered by Canadian auditor Michael Mackey. At the same time he denounced that the so-called "black list" of these operations is incomplete and gives access to only 10 percent of the reportable transactions.

He explained that of two million loans that are found in the belly of FOBAPROA, the auditor only could review 22,000 transactions, and of those he delivered only 2,300 in his report with the name or corporation (of the involved parties).

In the Herberto Castillo Hall of the Legislative Palace at San Lázaro, Congressmen Pablo Gómez and Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar confirmed that in the irregular operations were found the names of ex-bankers such as Carlos Cabal Peniche, Jorge Lankenau and Angel Rodríguez, known as "El Divino."

In addition, is said that the information opened last night with the support of "mathematical experts" shows loans by the companies Gutsa Construcciones, the Taesa airlines, Aceites Casa and the Santos de Hoyos, Bellesteros and Hank families (the latter through the Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana) with personal loans....

Narco News Commentary: What does this mean?

The FOBAPROA fund was something akin to, but not exactly like, the FDIC in the United States. It was a government protection fund for banks in case bad loans were not repayed. The New Mexican Oligarchy -- the bankers and other big businesses, together with the narco-traffickers -- found loopholes in the law that allowed them to make paper corporations (ideal for drug money laundering), contract bank loans without sufficient capital to pay them back, fail to pay the loans, and, in effect, collect the same money twice.

The pricetag for the Mexican people has already reached $80 billion US dollars.

ALL MEXICAN BANKS have been implicated in FOBAPROA, including the four big ones: BANAMEX, Bancomer, Bital and Serfin.

But PRI and PAN party legislators teamed up to make the public pay the bill while still hiding the names of the culprits and the amounts stolen. The legislature also paid $2 million dollars to Canadian auditor Michael Mackey to deliver a report, which he gave to the Congress on a CD-Rom, with a password that he divided into six parts and gave the five political parties in Congress one password apiece. Mackey reserved a sixth password for himself without disclosing that to Congress.

The left-wing PRD party contracted hackers -- they've called them "mathematical technicians" -- to break the code. After three weeks of round-the-clock labor, the hackers discovered the secret sixth password and broke it. And they discovered that Mexico's now president-elect Vicente Fox gave a false password during a nationally televised debate, which provoked his party to cough up the real one.

The last password unbroken was that of the PRI, last night.

Now, the hackers have made possible for the public to know: Canadian auditor Michael Mackey lied to his client -- the Congress -- not only when he hid the existence of the secret sixth password, but also about the contents of the disk. He hid 90-percent of the transactions.

The major players that are found in the 10-percent of the information he gave are those already under prosecution: the Hank Family (subpoenaed this week before the US Federal Reserve Board over false claims it made in the purchase of the Laredo National Bank of Texas with money laundered through the Virgin Islands), Carlos Cabal Peniche (in prison in Australia awaiting extradition to Mexico for various frauds and linked to drug money laundering), Jorge Lankenau and "El Divino" Angel Rodríguez, both criminally charged by the Mexican government. Read more on these individuals in our report on The Consolidation of the Narco-State.

What Canadian auditor Michael Mackey appears to have hidden are the 90 percent of the transactions by Banamex, Bancomer, Bital, Serfin and other banks, by individuals and companies that still enjoy impunity under the narco-state.

BANAMEX is particularly key, since Vicente Fox vacationed last weekend on the narco-island of Punta Pájaros, owned by Banamex president Roberto Hernández Ramírez. Also read Isabel Arvide's analysis of what signals Fox was sending in vacationing in the Hernández mansion.

The cracking of the code allows the Mexican people to know, for the first time, that the Canadian auditor himself committed a major fraud to his client. The drug money laundering aspect of FOBAPROA is also made clear with the revelations about Hank and Cabal Peniche.

The cries of illegality by the PAN and PRI parties toward the PRD demonstrate that even this limited amount of information moves the public record forward at a velocity that now shakes at the foundations of US and Mexican protection of massive money laundering and drug trafficking through Mexican banks.

And it gives one hot potato to President-elect Vicente Fox, whose party tried to keep this information under password-and-key.

Story Developing....

Previous Narco News stories on this process are:

http://www.narconews.com/hackers1.html (which announced, for the first time in English, that hackers were hot on the trail)

http://www.narconews.com/hackers2.html (which lists the passwords previously discovered)

Patricio's Commentary on FOBAPROA, translated below:

"Los Miserables" Cartoon by Patricio in the daily Milenio:

FRAME 1 (In front of the House of Deputies): "Step right up, honorable sir!"

FRAME 2: "Get your CD-Rom with classified information!"

FRAME 3: "CD-Rom you said? What kind of classified information?"

FRAME 4: "Ah, the CD that has the secret lists of ROB-APROA!" "What?"

FRAME 5: "And where the hell did you find this my indiscreet son? We have hidden our password" "Ah, with a little friend from grade school we went to the web page of the federal IPAB agency from a cyber-cafe, and we found the best thing"

FRAME 6: "Wow, it's something! With names of the pigs!" "Yes, yes, I already know, but lower your voice or the opposition might hear you."

FRAME 7: "Let's see. Give me all the copies you have and here's a hundred pesos to stay far away from computers."

FRAME 8 ("LATER"): "Cool! Gimme another 20 virgin CDs. Tomorrow I'm going to the Senate Chambers! ...oh yeah, and another backpack!"

 

Un abrazo fuerte a Patricio