MEXICO CITY — The strange saga of Zhenli Ye Gon and the $207 million in cash discovered during a March raid of his mansion here shows no signs of ending soon.
First, there is the matter of the money itself, which officials called the largest drug-cash seizure in history. The stacks of U.S. currency filled several steel cabinets and suitcases in Ye Gon's home in the fashionable Lomas de Chapultepec district. It has since been shipped by Mexican authorities to New York to be counted.
Ye Gon's wife and six others were arrested during the raid. But Ye Gon remains a fugitive.
Authorities said the money belonged to a ring of traffickers who manufactured methamphetamine in Mexico using chemicals imported from India and China.
But on Monday, a Mexican newspaper published excerpts from the latest missive from the Chinese Mexican entrepreneur, who charged from hiding that he was holding the money for corrupt Mexican officials and members of President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party.
Calderon responded to the accusations with a Spanish pun. He called Ye Gon's letter, published in full by the newspaper El Universal on its website, "a Chinese tale" (\o7un\f7 \o7cuento chino\f7), an idiomatic expression meaning "tall tale."
"Not only are they false statements, they are also ridiculous," Calderon said at a news conference with visiting Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. "Most Mexicans can see that it's part of a silly and clumsy strategy to avoid justice."
Calderon called the raid Mexico's "biggest strike against methamphetamine trafficking" and promised to bring Ye Gon to justice.
In an interview with the Associated Press this month, Ye Gon said Calderon's Labor secretary, Javier Lozano, had given him the cash. The money, Ye Gon said, had been destined to fund Calderon's presidential campaign and "terrorist" activities in the event of the victory of Calderon's opponent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Ye Gon repeated those assertions in his 17-page letter published Monday, saying, "I am an innocent victim and I was blackmailed to participate in these activities of the corrupt politics of Mexico."
The letter spun a fantastic story that involved suitcases filled with money delivered by cars with diplomatic license plates. Officials from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, made him an "honorary senator," Ye Gon wrote.
