Murder, Money, and Mexico --what a title, what a story, and what a news coup for PBS' award winning FRONTLINE."

"...This one is tough, take-no-prisoners investigative report on the killings, kickbacks and possible drug connections during the administration of Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

A Swiss investigator says the money the former president's brother put in Swiss bank accounts is believed to be profits from drug trafficking. That's just one news item from the FRONTLINE interviews on this show with high potential for controversy."

"With so many threads to probe, the story of what's been happening in Mexico is a tangled web. But as FRONTLINE weaves those threads together, a tapestry emerges that connects both sides of the Rio Grande.

"Murder, Money, and Mexico, a brilliant FRONTLINE special that doggedly, precisely, and coldly illustrates how completely corruption corrupts.

While the Swiss investigation into the fortune accumulated by Salinas, who now lives in exile in Dublin, and the imprisonment in Mexico of his brother Raul Salinas for drug trafficking continues, FRONTLINE provides strong evidence that Raul Salinas's fortune was built on cooperation with drug cartels."

...... The drama builds inexorably--much like Costa-Gavra's brilliant political melodrama, Z (1968)- to the conclusion that the Swiss can, and will, prove that a significant portion of the $100 million in Raul Salinas's accounts comes from drug cartels. If this is confirmed in the investigation scheduled to be completed within a few weeks, then certain bankers and banks, in this case Raul Salinas's bank, Citibank, could be prosecuted."

"...While aimed at the corruption in Mexico, this FRONTLINE has broader implications. It makes it very clear that the line between legitimate campaign contributions and bribery can be as thin as the skin on the palm of a politician's hand."

"If you got the impression over the years that the Mexican Government was a stew of corruption, nothing in "Murder, Money, and Mexico, is likely to change your mind. Tonight's edition of FRONTLINE tells of influence-peddling, money laundering, drug dealing, murder and associated activities by the Salinas political family, which appears to have set a record, even for Mexico, of self-enrichment.

Although the program doesn't come up with much in the way of hard new evidence, it offers an abundance of allegations, speculations, suspicions, suppositions and plausible surmises about the doings of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who has fled his country, and Raul Salinas de Gortari, his brother, who is being held on the charge of murdering a sometime political ally."

"Politics, corruption, drugs and killing in that unfortunate country south of San Ysidro have mingled to the point where nothing seems bizarre anymore, and the story has grown convoluted far beyond the ability of the average American to follow the bewildering trails of blood, money and power.

Luckily. we have FRONTLINE television's most consistently rewarding documentary series, to straighten out the confusion and put the picture in perspective, at least until the story winds itself around another hairpin curve.

Tomorrow's installment of FRONTLINE called "Murder, Money, and Mexico, begins on a park bench in Dublin, where an apparently mild-mannered man with a baldhead and a mustache sits placidly reading a newspaper, seemingly just another well-off gentleman at his leisure. That gentleman is Carlos Salinas de Gortari, now in retirement (or exile, depending on how you look at it), whose term as president of Mexico sank to what many regard as unprecedented depths of corruption."

"..."Murder, Money, and Mexico, is an unusually complex tale and the corruption it details could easily fill a mini-series. Viewers probably won't be surprised to learn that corruption in Mexico arrived with the Spaniards and reached its peak in the late 1980s with the Salinas brothers. But what is truly intriguing about the corruption is the way it is linked to 'privatization' and the subsequent business dealings of these assorted establishment thugs with US. banks and other companies understandably eager to step in and exploit Mexico. The so-called ruling elite continues to prosper and salt away billions in foreign banks and companies, but the Mexican public, as always, suffers the heaviest punishment, caught in an economic meltdown .....worse than the Great Depression.

The North American free-trade agreement, it would appear from the evidence in this film, gave carte blanche to economic gangsters on both sides of the border to behave with impunity. This is a splendid piece of current affairs filmmaking......."