Mexico City - Raul Salinas, the older brother of ex-president Carlos Salinas, had a jail sentence for murder cut nearly in half yesterday and may have millions waiting for him when he gets out.
Appeals court Judge Tomas Hernandez Franco cut Salinas's sentence from 50 to 27 1/2 years. Salinas was convicted of ordering the 1994 assassination of senior ruling party official Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu.
Meanwhile, a tribunal in Lausanne, Switzerland, unblocked $114 million in Swiss bank accounts which had been frozen since 1995, pending an investigation into whether the funds came from drug smugglers paying protection money during President Salinas's 1988-1994 administration.
