The 1st of March, 2004, local Mexican television news programs screened a video where a young and handsome senator from the Mexican Green Ecologist Party (PVEM) was seen and heard making a deal in exchange for two million dollars. The following day the local news station played a video were the Financial Comptroller of the City of Mexico was seen playing black jack in the of tens of thousands of dollars a shot, at a Las Vegas hotel. It must be borne in mind that the greater Mexico City has 20 million people and its budget is about 12 billion US dollars per annum. The third day the same news station showed the Mayor's private secretary , a Mr Bejarano, receiving packets of money from an Argentinean born builder. Finally the news was out that the Mayor wanted to know who had made this information available to the news station. The twist came when later that same week it was made known that former Mayor and leader of the PRD Rosario Robles, ex president of that political party, used the builder's private jets for her campaign but not only. It turned out shed had an affaire with Mr. Carlos Ahumada Kurtz. Then it was learnt that many construction firms hired by the City of Mexico belonged to this gentleman who was also a major funder of the PRD. Many public works, it turned out, were paid but were never built, to the tune of millions of US Dollars per year. The next news was that Mr Ahumada had fled to Cuba and that Interpol caught him there. In the aftermath of the quake, Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas quit the party, alongside Robles and others. The 81% popularity of the Mayor of Mexico and PRD leader Lopez Obrador fell to 64% and is still going down in April, having turned second in the polls for the Presidency in 2006. after being the favorite runnerup. Corruption is not new. The screening of the videos is new. In September, 2000, in Peru, another video was leaked. It showed Mr. Montesinos, advisor to the National Intelligence Service, delivering money to a congressman to change sides. He filmed everything that happened in the Palace of Government and in his office at the National Intelligence Service, but also some hotel rooms were highly visible gentlemen went to have sex with usually more than one mate. Peruvians were able to watch how leading politicians, entrepreneurs and journalists sold themselves in cash, like later in Mexico, while the operation was videotaped presumably to ensure that if the contract was not kept, or if there was treason, everyone would fall, both the payer and the payees. That is the mafioso logic of filming and taping conversations and payments. More recently a video came out in Brasil showing an advisor to Dirceu, a leader of the PT receiving money from a businessman. Videos are the going thing in the fight against corruption. There are countries were people involved in corruption get killed and others were they don't. That is a starting point to understand where and how deeply corruption is investigated. In Mexico and Colombia people related to corruption and investigations are shot, and even in Brazil were violence is more select, P.C. Farias the strongman of Collor de Melo in his corruption case was found dead shot in the head, lying in a ditch on the side of a road. While Lopez Obrador, in Mexico, is doing his very best to find the person responsible of leaking these videos to the press, and foun d it in the person of a Government Party politician former presidente of Congress; in post Fujimori Peru, we did not kill the messenger because we found it was more important to show what had happened in order for it not to recur. The question of who leaked the video showing Montesinos paying Mr. Kouri tens of thousands of dollars for changing sides in Congress was irrelevant. The political fact was that the politician once from the right wing Christian Popular Party was selling his vote in Parliament to Fujimori and his cronies for a small amount. What became clear was the stock of the political class itself, that ruled Peru during the dictatorship and that made it stumble quickly. After the fall of both Fujimori and his soul mate Montesinos, in November 2000, those responsible could be tried and put in jail, mainly those relating to the military and the media bribed by the Government. Montesinos was found hiding in Venezuela and hundreds of court cases were opened against him. He is now in a high security prison in the company of Abimael Guzman, head of Sendero Luminoso; Polay, the head of MRTA; and another three equally heavy jail mates. At the beginning of the new democratically elected Government of Toledo, July 28 2001, Congress appointed five investigative commissions with all the powers of the Supreme Court in terms of information and personal requirements. A) The investigative Commissions of Economic and Financial Crimes 1900-2001, B) The investigative Commission for crimes committed by Montesinos, C) Investigative Commission for crimes committed by Fujimori, D) Investigative Commission on external debt operations, E) Investigative commission on Drug traffic; and their results were presented in the plenary of Congress and then sent to the Public Attorney's office. In the next legislature the investigations were completed through a mega commission on Corruption that contained the unfinished work of the five Commissions. The political trials to lift the immunity of congressmen and former ministers were made and they were sanctioned by being banned from having a political life for a period of time from one to ten years. This will prevent, among other things, Fujimori running for president in the next two terms. There is awareness in the Peruvian body politic and in the people as a whole, that if the corrupt are not put in prison, and the ways of handling business and politics does not change fast, we shall bury the concept of a better future. It is equally clear that the entire judicial system is corrupt from the top down, starting from the largest law offices through the courts, to the judges down to the last legal secretaries, and that that must change. Reason is granted today to the one who pays the most; or even better, for a modest sum gets the his/her cased derailed or frozen in the pipelines, until the crimes expire. Not everything seen on TV in Peru and later in Mexico is a crime. Only what is registered in the Penal Code is. This means that Penal Codes must be updated immediately in order for them to include the new financial crimes we are seeing now, bigger and more important than all the others.. While the Mexican political scandals were unfolding, the news came out that the documents held at FOBAPROA, the rescue fund for banking failures that salvaged shareholders form prison in 1995 at a cost of 120,000 US$ was declared classified as "national security" and therefore secret. That same week, the records of IPAB, the institute that monitors the Fund was also declared of "national security" importance. Evidently FOBAPROA holds sensitive information on large-scale corruption but the public attention was aimed at political corruption that week. It is rumored that the directors of IPAB are the same shareholders rescued by FOBAPROA. and that they would be cleaning the information available at FOBAPROA. To clean means they could be withdrawing the documents with which they guaranteed their loans, leaving the Government with an empty shell. In Peru this was seen in the case of Banco Latino and also in the liquidation of development banks. From the total amount of loans held by the administrator of the development banks portfolios, only 12% were recovered in the decade of the 1990's. In the case of Banco Latino, 400 million dollars of loans have lost their documents, which is exactly the amount the Government put in. The bank was already bankrupt when the State rescued it, instead of closing it. The Mexican case shows us that corruption does not have a political side, that both a progressive party like the Mexican PRD or the fascist Fujimori regime can have the same vices. It equally show that political corruption receives more attention than economic corruption and that, above all, there is a greater will to sanction political corruption in the media than economic corruption and that this last one can be hidden behind the pretense of national security. The public viewing of videos showing the events of corruption is an ethical punishment of those political actors willing to sell their conscience In Peru the battle made against the political corruption led by the golden twins of Fujimori/Montesinos in the company of generals, owners of media and congress people progressed and some wre in jail. On the other hand, the economic corruption investigated by Congress has not been punished yet, four years after the dictator left. The battle has not been won in this field in spite of the fact that hundreds of military, ex ministers and media people are in jail. The most powerful people accused of corruption are free and remain linked to the mafia which includes builders, bankers, media, senior lawyers, senior economic consultants and former finance ministers who have argued that they are subject to an ideological chase while at the same time their cases remain frozen in the judiciary pipelines. It must be underlined that economic corruption is impossible without international banks were the money is finally deposited in tax and financial paradises so it remains untouchable. Mexico is the home of the expression "everything for my friends, to my enemies, the law" said to belong to Don Porfirio Díaz, the president that ruled for over thirty years at the end of the XIXth and early XXth century. "No one can resist a canonball of 50,000 pesos" belongs to General Obregón, president during the 1920's. Finally the known slogan " a politician that is poor is a poor politician" belongs to the former Mayor of Mexico Hank Gonzales in the 1980's..Mr Gonzales is a multimillionaire, that at some point was in the Forbes list of the richest men in the world and that had a heliport in his ten thousand square meter mansion one block away from Avenida Insurgents in the elegant side of Mexico City. At the beginning of the XXI century Latin American Governments need to recognize the urgency of changing the trait that is present from the beginning of the republic up to now, that the Government is corrupt and a public service culture be installed in its place. Corrption of all sorts, administrative, economic and political must be sanctioned with equal severity. Public officials know full well that the monies they administer belong to the citizens and that most of them are poor, which makes it a double crime. Corruption not only bleeds the public treasury, but it also distorts the role of the public servant in its relationship with the public sector taking from the poor and giving to the rich. We have found that there is no corruption without large winners outside the Government, during the investigations on economic corruption held in the Peruvian Congress. This can also be seen in the FABAPROA/IPAB case in Mexico Even in administrative and political corruption, the great winners are outside the State but the penalties are all oriented, in the penal code, to the public servant. The corruption indices built for Transparency International are orientated solely towards administrative corruption that is the least important and that acts as a tax. The great political corruption, however, as shown by the Italian case of Bettino Craxi, or the Spanish case around the PSOE, or the scandals that surrounded Mitterand and his family and friends, and by Fujimori and his cronies is related too ex presidents and their ministers, and to political parties The great economic corruption is found where there is big money to be had. Enron, MCI, Adelphia, Parmalat, were companies had had their accounts made up with the help of key auditors for the benefit of the CEO and the VP in charge of Finance that were able to sell their positions using privileged information while the general public received false statements sealed with the auditors name. The other large scale economic corruption is done by entrepreneurs in Latin America that rescue their money from bankrupt firms using the taxpayers money while demonstrating that risk is not an investment element in this environment and that the State will always salvage them, as long as they remain in good terms with the Government. This was particularly evident in Ecuador in the late 1990's. Finally no one is exempt from corruption as in the case of Halliburton and Bechtel in the United States where the firms receive multimillion dollar contracts to work in the reconstruction of Irak, while their executives work in the White House, according to Paul Krugman in the New York Times.. México-Lima, 08.03.2001, 2004 * Oscar Ugarteche. Former senior advisor to the 4Th Vice President of the National Congress of the Republic of Peru, 2001 - 2002. Former coordinator of the Investigative Commission on Economic and Financial Crimes 1990-2001. legislature 2001-2002. Former advisor of the Investigative Comisión on Corruption 1990-2000, legislature 2002 – 2003.