Vic: Cabal chooses return to Mexico to face charges

AAP General News (Australia)
08-03-2001
Vic: Cabal chooses return to Mexico to face charges

MELBOURNE, Aug 3 AAP - Mexican banker Carlos Cabal will return home to face fraud charges
because he is fed up with his incarceration at Melbourne's Port Phillip Prison, according
to his lawyers.

Cabal could return to Mexico in a week, where he is wanted over fraud charges totalling
$US242.7 million ($A468.99 million) arising from the collapse of Banco Union, the country's
major bank.

Lawyer Murray Gerkens said yesterday a major part of Mr Cabal's decision to return
home was that he would not be able to see his family in the lead-up to an appeal against
an extradition order due to go before the High Court on September 6.

"It reached the stage that it became clear to Mr Cabal that after two and half years
in prison he could not obtain his release in order to go on with the High Court appeal,"

Mr Gerkens said.

"He couldn't stand the circumstances of his condition and the fact that he had been
separated from his family any longer."

A formal statement has already been issued in Mexico by Cabal's Mexican attorney Alberto
Zinser, and it is believed a deal has been brokered to see Cabal released on $US250,000
($A483,091.79) bail upon his return.

In June, Cabal suggested he might be willing to return to Mexico because he believed
his chance of a fair trial had improved since a change of government in December, which
ended 71 years of continuous rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Last month, High Court Justice Michael Kirby granted Cabal bail, but that was overturned
by the full bench of the High Court in Sydney earlier this week.

Cabal was arrested in Melbourne after an international manhunt in November 1998, and
has been held in the maximum security section of Port Phillip Prison ever since.

AAP db/wjf/sb

KEYWORD: CABAL DAYLEAD

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