Fugitive Banker Rebuts Zedillo on Political Funds Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Fugitive Banker Rebuts Zedillo on Political Funds Reuters 09-JUN-99 MELBOURNE, June 9 (Reuters) - Fugitive Mexican banker Carlos Cabal Peniche, facing extradition from Australia on US$700 million in fraud charges, said President Ernesto Zedillo was fully aware of his donations during the 1994 Mexican elections. Cabal Peniche created a stir in Mexico two weeks ago with a statement from jail to a U.S. newspaper saying he had "promoted and facilitated the delivery" of two donations to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) worth a total $20 million. Zedillo, who was campaign director for the party before becoming its presidential candidate in 1994, has denied he knew about the big donations. "Zedillo had knowledge of the first donation and we met personally and discussed the second donation," Cabal Peniche said in a statement provided on Wednesday by his spokesman. He said he arranged the second donation with Zedillo at PRI headquarters in Mexico City on January 12, 1994. The campaign funds have become a hot issue amid speculation that Mexican taxpayers may be paying for the donations and amid a furore over whether the funds were legal. The bank Cabal Peniche ran, which helped channel the funds, collapsed and was bailed out by the government after Mexico's 1994-95 peso crash. He fled Mexico in 1994 soon after the collapse of his banking group, Grupo Financiero Cremi-Union, and was arrested in Australia last November in Melbourne, where he was working as a cheese and wine salesman. The banker said he raised the equivalent of $15 million for the first political donation and about $5 million for the second, but said his personal contribution was within the law. "The office of the president is correct in saying my personal donation would not have exceeded the legal limit of one million pesos," Cabal Peniche said. He said more than 47 million pesos, worth about $15 million at the time, was deposited in a PRI trust account at Banco Union in July 1993 and separate amounts were paid out of it to the PRI between October 1993 and the end of May 1994. Cabal Peniche is due to appear in Federal Court in Melbourne on Thursday in a bid to delay his extradition hearing set for July 19. His lawyers say they need more time to gather evidence for their defence, arguing that Cabal Peniche is a target of political persecution, his spokesman said. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.All rights reserved. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-06.11.99-02:39:34-18098