Mexico Panel Clears Former Oil Chief of Corruption Charges

MEXICO CITY — A special congressional commission on Friday cleared Mario Ramon Beteta, the former chief of Mexico’s oil company, of union allegations that he embezzled about $49 million.

The Mexico City daily Excelsior said the commission split along party lines in ruling that “no illicit conduct existed.”

Fifteen members belonging to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party voted to clear Beteta, who also belongs to PRI.

Of seven commissioners who voted against exoneration, six belong to opposition parties and the seventh was PRI member Adolfo Barrientos, head of the union that was at odds with Beteta when he was chief of the government oil monopoly Pemex, the paper said.

Beteta, who became Pemex chief in 1982 as part of President Miguel de la Madrid’s anti-corruption campaign, left in January to become governor of Mexico state.

It was Barrientos who in late September leveled the charges against Beteta, just hours after the former oil chief met with President-elect Carlos Salinas de Gortari and endorsed Salinas’ call for modernizing the PRI. Such modernization could include probes into union corruption and has been opposed by key labor sectors.