A Tough Line on Fraud; American scrutiny forces changes in Latin America.

Byline: Scott Johnson

Mexico, along with most other countries in Latin America, is integrating rapidly with the global economy. The country's GDP grew by nearly 5 percent last quarter, and its investment climate is generally considered favorable. Yet that same integration, along with heightened concerns about terrorist funding, has led to more scrutiny of the region's business and regulatory practices. In particular, new U.S. corporate-governance laws like Sarbanes-Oxley, and certain provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act, are pressuring Latin American regulators and corporations to do more to find and eliminate fraud.

One Sarbanes-Oxley provision requires foreign companies listed on American stock exchanges to tighten up their internal fraud controls or face potential legal action by U.S. authorities. The laws are also aimed at curtailing money laundering, and mandate that U.S. companies perform tougher "due diligence" investigations of foreign firms and individuals with whom they do business. David Robillard, the Mexico director for the security firm Kroll, says the more-stringent U.S. regulatory environment has forced often-lax Latin regulators to toughen up or lose control over their own multinationals. Adds Boris Kruijssen, Latin America regional director of Control Risks Group: "There's still a lot of anti-Americanism in places like Brazil, but they're now doing business in a different way because of these U.S laws."

On Jan. 4, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed several civil fraud charges against Mexican media baron Ricardo Salinas Pliegas, chairman of Mexico's second largest broadcaster, TV Azteca. Using a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, U.S investigators charged Salinas and two of his top executives with engaging in "an elaborate scheme" to conceal a $109 million profit Salinas allegedly engineered by purchasing debt at reduced prices from an Azteca cell-phone subsidiary called Unefon. Salinas has denied the charges and accused the SEC of operating in "bad faith." U.S. regulators filed the charges against the TV Azteca executives because the company is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and thus is subject to U.S. laws.

Mexico's National Banking and Securities Commission led the TV Azteca investigation, and may yet charge the executives itself. But the fact that a U.S. regulatory body went public with the charges has raised questions about whether Latin American countries are ...