Mexicans call for probe into official's death

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- Mexican authorities Friday faced calls for a full investigation into the death of a senior trade official, with conspiracy-minded citizens casting doubt on initial evidence that it was a suicide.

The body of Raul Ramos Tercero, 45, a deputy secretary in the trade ministry who had been supervising a controversial vehicle registration program, was found with a gash in the neck in a wooded area 12 miles from Mexico City, police said on Thursday.

Ramos's death was the latest chapter in the saga of the car registration program, known as Renave, that has turned into nightmare for President Ernesto Zedillo in his final weeks in power and played into public convictions that corruption from seven decades of one-party rule is still deeply rooted.

An unscientific call-in poll conducted by the Televisa network Thursday night showed 72 percent of callers did not believe Ramos had taken his own life.

"There's got to be an investigation (into Ramos's death) because we're dealing with someone who was in the eye of the hurricane in a very heated public debate," said Congressman Marti Batres of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

"There were very powerful economic interests and even people involved with bloodshed in other Latin American countries" in Renave operations, Batres said.

Renave was launched in May in a bid to build a national database that would help curb Mexico's well-oiled mafias dealing in stolen vehicles.

But it was unpopular from the start among car owners who had to pay $38 to register a new car and $11 for a used car.

It turned from unpopular to sinister last month when the program's director, Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, was arrested after it was revealed he was a former Argentine military officer, named as a suspected torturer under Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship.

Although local police said Ramos's death was a suicide, the Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) said it was still investigating. "The Attorney General's Office at this moment has made no conclusions," Deputy Attorney General Everardo Moreno told a news conference late Thursday.

Among wilder theories, Roberto Zapata, head of the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce, speculated that Ramos may have been killed by mafias threatened by the car registry.

"I could say that it could have been people affected by Renave, given that today the trafficking of (stolen) cars is becoming a major source of money," he told reporters.

This despite evidence which seemed to back the suicide motive -- including six letters left by the Stanford-educated Ramos explaining his action to his family, colleagues and the press.

Zedillo's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost the presidency for the first time since the party's foundation in 1929 in July's election and a weak judicial system remains one of the PRI's most crippling legacies. He hands over the presidential sash to Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) on Dec. 1.

In country where few crimes are solved, official explanations of crimes are often seen by the wary public as nothing more than cover-ups.

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