Jump to full article: San Francisco Weekly, 2009-01-19
Author: Matt Smith, Mon., Jan. 19 2009 @ 3:59PM
Intro: As Sunday news reports described Mexican monopolist Carlos Slim Helu's bid to become the largest shareholder of The New York Times, readers and staffers were no doubt wondering precisely what kind of scoundrel he is.
. . .
Thanks to an archive at the University of California at San Francisco filled with once-secret corporate records of tobacco companies, it's now possible to draw specific connections among Slim's business interests, his relationships with government officials, and his apparent ability to skew Mexican government policies to benefit his corporate empire.
Slim's Grupo Carso holding company has a controlling interest in Cigatam, which has the Mexican franchise to produce Marlboro and other Philip Morris cigarettes. And the the UCSF documents suggest a cozy and highly profitable relationship between Slim and top Mexican officials. . . .
In 1999, Slim hosted Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, the Mexican health and treasury ministers, and a visiting Philip Morris vice chairman, at his home.
The U.S. tobacco executive was impressed how "open-minded" the Mexican health officials were, according to a memo in the UCSF archive. A month after the Zedillo-Slim-Philip Morris pow-wow, Mexican news articles described how regulators in that country thwarted efforts by anti-tobacco attorneys to convince the Mexican government to file U.S.-style lawsuits against Cigatam and other tobacco producers.
It's painful imagining such a man as the top shareholder overseeing America's best newsroom.
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