petitions in Lucerne, my nephews went to school there and two of my daughters are in schoolthere now.8 Salinas requested the indulgence of the Swiss prosecutors before answering their questions:"I also want to offer my apologies to the Swiss government and the country's financialinstitutions...and I'm going to explain why I acted as I did and assumed different identities,basically, because at the time the accounts were opened under different names, I was unfamiliarwith the system Citibank proposed to me, so fictitious names were used to avoid creating a politicalscandal; if I had known beforehand about Confidas, Citibank's system, I wouldn't have resorted tofictitious names.9Authorities have identified Confidas as a Citibank subsidiary corporation, legallydomiciled in Panama and with offices in Switzerland. As of this date, officers of this bankinginstitution have repeatedly denied that its executives have engaged in any violation of ethicalbehavior or financial regulations targeting money laundering. The case against Raul Salinas has led US experts and officials to ask questions about gapsin the legal machinery for detecting the laundering of money from sources other than drugtrafficking. Doubts have also arisen concerning the actions of US banks which accept deposits fromforeigners incapable of justifying the source or size of their assets. In the interrogation, conducted under terms of the mutual legal assistance treaty andtranscribed in 16 single-spaced pages, Salinas denies that the funds frozen in Switzerland were thefruit of any unlawful activity.10 While continuing to suspect a connection with drug trafficking,Mexican authorities also believe that part of the funds deposited in Switzerland and other countrieswas obtained from corruption and devaluation of the Mexican Peso with the government headed byhis brother (ex-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari).11 Such commissions were believed to havebeen pocketed even after Salinas ...
