Brother of Mexican ex-president cleared of illicit enrichment charges

Mexico City, Dec 17 (EFE).- A Mexican appeals court has upheld a ruling that acquitted the brother of former President Carlos Salinas of illicit enrichment charges, judicial sources said.

The ruling, announced Tuesday, brings an end to 19 years of accusations against Raul Salinas de Gortari, who was first acquitted of those charges in July 2013.

In 1996, he was accused of illegally obtaining roughly 224 million pesos (some $15.1 million at the current exchange rate) that he used to purchase properties.

Those properties had been seized from the defendant but now must be returned, while authorities also must unfreeze several of his bank accounts.

Raul Salinas, whose brother was president from 1988 to 1994, was released from prison in June 2005 after his conviction in the 1994 murder of the then-secretary general of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, was overturned.

Weeks before leaving prison, where he spent more than 10 years, Raul Salinas acknowledged in an interview with Britain's Financial Times that his personal fortune was attributable in part to his political connections.

The senator of the leftist PRD party, Alejandro Encinas, said the decision to clear Salinas of the illicit enrichment charges is "absurd."

"The case of Raul Salinas de Gortari is the best example of impunity ... and how power doesn't forget its accomplices and forgives them," he said.

For her part, the senator of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, Laura Rojas, said the case is a sign that the country "urgently needs a new system and legal framework to combat corruption."