Attorney General. When the new man began digging into the Ruiz Massieu business he discovered that his predecessor had systematically covered up a trail of evidence leading directly to the former President’s older brother, Raul. As Mexicans watched in astonishment, Raul Salinas, untouchable member of the ruling class, was hauled away and charged with the murder of Francisco Ruiz Massieu. Suddenly the air was full of feathers.  Mario Ruiz Massieu caught the next plane out but he was stopped at Newark Airport with $47,000 in his pocket. Shortly thereafter investigators discovered another $9 million stashed in a Houston bank.  But Ruiz Massieus’s stash paled in comparison to the $120 million discovered in a Swiss bank account maintained by the former president’s brother, Raul.^[19] Officials on both sides of the border charged that all this unexplained cash was tied to drug payoffs.^[20]

But these winnings, though impressive, were peanuts compared to the wealth of the man Ruiz Massieu and Raul Salinas were said to be protecting. Juan Garcia Abrego, head of the Gulf cartel, was worth some $15 billion. At a time when all that heat was focused on Tijuana, Abrego was running a wide-open operation out of Matamoros into Brownsville, Texas, and it was generally understood that he had protection at the highest levels.^[21]  A police officer who showed up at one of Abrego’s fiestas reported that guests were arriving like Arabian princes in a procession of Learjets, and among the bankers, criminals, and off-duty cops,  was the president’s brother.  As Raul Salinas stepped off the plane, he received a warm abrazo from the host. “When I saw them greet each other, I knew that Abrego was untouchable.”^[22] 

Two years later, as if someone had thrown a switch, Abrego’s protection vanished when Salinas left office. Shortly thereafter Abrego was captured and hustled out of the country to face several life sentences in Houston. Subsequently, investigators claimed that Raul Salinas had made a deal to protect Abrego as long as his brother was president.^[23]  But when Mexican