The many faces of corruption: graft lines the nation's boardrooms and back alleys like that filthy fungus that won't wash away.

Andres Heredia knew something was fishy the rainy June afternoon he went to pick up the money.

The day before, in Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Treasurer Jorge Cardenas' office, he first heard about the donation. Then Cardenas told him he would help make the run tomorrow. Cardenas reassured Heredia the money flowed from a completely licit donation to the campaign from the oil workers' union. He had stressed the word "licit".

They left the party's national headquarters the next day in an armored black Jeep Cherokee with a Suburban full of military guards from the presidential candidate's retinue. They parked in the back alley behind the Cometra armored service company, which shared its own private entrance to the main Banorte vault in the center of the capital.

They entered, signed the papers and carried out 43 million pesos in duffle bags, and then drove back to Cardenas' office. The same routine with a rotation of players would be repeated 19 more times before the end of the month in the final weeks before the PRI, which had ruled for seven decades, lost its first presidential race in history.

The money, totaling about 1.5 billion pesos, had been handed over by the state-run oil monopoly's directors to its union's leaders--for supposed legal and union obligations. They in turn gave 640 million pesos to their beloved party. Sen. Ricardo Aldana, the union's treasurer, personally opened the Banorte account. According to testimony and documents presented to federal Judge Jose Luis Moya, the PRI laundered the money through a variety of methods. These included state raffles in which the wife of a party boss was guaranteed to win and paying off the staffs and expenses of prominent lawmakers. Still, investigators were unable to account for much of the money.

With this picture painted by financial records and witnesses under protective custody like Heredia, prosecutors laid out charges against 12 former officials, lawmakers and union bosses in the spring of 2002. More than a year later, none of the players involved in the heist, dubbed Pemexgate, have been successfully prosecuted.

BALL DROPPED ON PEMEXGATE

When President Fox took office in 2000, he promised to wage war on the rampant corruption in the serpentine government bureaucracy that for decades has bled the country of resources and efficiency. The Pemexgate scandal with its high-profile protagonists--ex-Coahuila governor and former Pemex director Rogelio Montemayor and Carlos Romero Deschamps, the rags-to-riches oil union chief who has served as a senator or deputy nearly continuously since the late 1980s--looked like it was going to be Fox's big catch.

But a week after the PRI trounced Fox's National Action Party (PAN) in the midterm elections, prosecutors announced all felony charges against the duffle-bag gang would be dropped. Now, everyone involved is breathing easier--facing only misdemeanor charges of embezzlement and abuse of authority--and quietly waiting to take their place in the long line of infamous politicians who made out like bandits and rode off into the sunset.

Every president since Jose Lopez Portillo has loudly proclaimed a war on corruption upon entering office. Each theatrically sacked, charged and locked up a showpiece--usually from the oil workers' union. Then began the slow process of catching a buzz on the intoxicating power of being El Presidente. That is, until Ernesto Zedillo, a stuffy U.S.-trained technocrat, came into office and set the nation down the path to democratic reform.

During the previous decades, the patronage holding together Mexico's political system into a one-party, near-perfect dictatorship had festered into a corrupt system that provided ample opportunity to rob the people dry.

Administration after administration took full advantage of their six years, stuffing their pockets full. Meanwhile, average Mexicans were pummeled by successive economic crises and suffered a staggering rise in crime. After the once-beloved Carlos Salinas turned out to be as rotten as the rest, the conclusion was inevitable--the PRI gravy train was going nowhere.

Fox won primarily on his promise of change, a break from the PRI's nepotism, and the pledge to clean up the corruption many now blamed for Mexico's social and developmental ills. But in the showdown with the PRI, Fox buckled.

He discarded calls for a South African-style truth commission to uproot the crimes of the past. Instead, he established a special prosecutor to investigate the more violent extremes of the PRI's authoritarian regime, like the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre and the dirty war against guerillas in the poor south during the 1970s. While the ancient and infamous were called in to testify about government-orchestrated slaughters, prosecutors have been unable to put anyone on trial for the decades-old crimes.

This summer, charges were dropped against the Pemexgate suspects just days after Fox's party was hammered at the midterm ballot box. The national media were quick to suspect a deal between Fox's camp and the members of the powerful, PRI-controlled Pemex union.

Analysts say Fox's prosecutions have been hampered by his political need to work with the newly strengthened PRI in Congress. If he wants to pass any of his planned reforms, he can no longer afford to threaten the party that still controls much of the political system. While many hoped Fox would use his position to break up PRI bastions of power and patronage like the oil workers' union, analysts say it's too late now.

"He missed his chance," said Jorge Chabat, a crime expert at the Mexico City-based university CIDE. "To work with the PRI, you need a stick and carrot. Fox didn't have a carrot, and he didn't use the stick. Now the PRI is blackmailing the Fox government, and he doesn't have the strength to push anymore."

I FEEL SO DIRTY

While Fox's administration has failed to net any of the big fish he promised, it has begun to lay the groundwork for at least a less-dirty Mexico.

But it will be no easy task. Corruption permeates every level of Mexican society. Traffic cops daily shake down motorists. To get anything done by a government clerk, you have to pay up. Officials hand over contracts to their brothers' companies. The native varieties of graft and traffic of influence are as diverse as the republic's flora and as ingrained as praying to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

An estimated sum equal to 9.5% of GDP--almost US$60 billion--is eaten up by diirty deeds every year, according to the federal comptroller's office.

Hoping to change the tide, Fox continues to support the administrative baby steps that could transform Mexico into a more open and less-corrupt nation, and he has introduced landmark reforms to insure a transparent and more professional bureaucracy.

First, Fox set a new tone for honesty and transparency within the federal secretariats under his control, a simple break from the PRI's cronyism that cannot be underestimated, said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at Virginia's College of William & Mary.

"Fox is honest," Grayson said. "Every president with the exception of Zedillo amassed huge fortunes while in office, but Fox really isn't in it for the money. He is leading by example and he has put in place honest cabinet members to run his administration."

The cleanup of Mexican Customs, traditionally one of the most corrupt branches of the government, continues. Simple administrative reforms like paying higher salaries to agents and restricting access to Customs stations are reducing the amount of contraband moving through the nation's ports of entry.

While greased palms still pass tons of cheap Asian goods past the tax man, Finance Secretary Francisco Gil Diaz is renowned for his zest to clean up Customs and is building a new Customs service that should outlast Fox's administration.

Fox has also made good on his promise to go after drug lords and the corrupt security forces in their pay. In increasing cooperation with U.S. authorities, new Mexican vice squads have taken out famed narcos and busted up corrupt precincts and military bases across the nation. While governments at the state or municipal level still remain under the thrall of organized crime, Fox is trying to keep his men honest.

The capital's infamous police gangs are also being brought into line. Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has embraced former New York mayor and crime fighter Rudolph Guiliani's 146 steps to clean up the metropolis, starting with paying notoriously underpaid cops a living wage.

A RAY OF TRUTH

One sure legacy of Fox's battle against graft is his Freedom of Information Act, which declares government information the citizens' property and sets up a system to help people get it. Analysts say the law is crucial for building up Mexico's nascent civil society learning to live free from the PRI's purse strings.

Before this watershed legislation was passed and came into effect in June, only corruption could win you access to the truth in Mexico. Journalists had to cozy up to functionaries just to get cooked statistics to put in their stories.

"This is the most important reform to date of the Fox administration," said the CIDE's Chabat. "It will change the nation. It's going to be a lot more difficult to get away with siphoning public funds and not be detected."

But the truth isn't enough in Mexico. Mexican lower courts remain easily influenced by wealth, power and expensive lawyers. Prosecutors lack the experience to convict powerful defendants.

"The courts were all rigged before. The Attorney General's Office never developed the skills to really prosecute people, sometimes they just planted evidence," said Chabat. "Mexican law is complex and it's difficult to prove someone is guilty if you play by the rules. These crooks may be corrupt, but they aren't stupid."

Only a serious judicial reform will solve these problems, analysts say. But that will be up to the divided Congress, whose track record so far is less than inspiring.

Wars on corruption can come and go with the whim of presidents. If Fox has faltered in going after some of the nation's more notorious crooks, he has done something more far reaching with his information access law.

In his quest for transparency, he suffered the indignity of opening up his own overpriced bathroom to the public view. In his support for the free press, he has let himself become an object of ridicule by the media. In the end, it will have been Fox who left open the closet door of Los Pinos and the basement of the Interior Secretariat for good. Let the coming occupants beware.

Michael O'Boyle is a Mexico City-based freelance writer.