March 1994 — Luis Donaldo Colosio, the designated heir to outgoing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI—Partido Revolucionario Institucional) President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, is shot and killed at a presidential campaign rally in Tijuana. Despite rumors of a high-level conspiracy, a six-year government investigation concludes that a lone gunman is responsible for the assassination.
August 1994 — PRI candidate Ernesto Zedillo wins the presidency. Zedillo institutes a number of electoral reforms and fraud-control measures that reduce the advantages of the incumbent PRI, such as closing down a secret presidential slush fund Congress had set up during President Salinas' final year in office.
November 1994 — Zedillo picks Antonio Lozano, leader of the conservative opposition National Action Party (PAN—Partido Acción Nacional) in the Chamber of Deputies, to be his attorney general, the first time in 65 years of PRI rule that a member of the opposition is appointed to the cabinet. Under Lozano's guidance, the government forms elite anti-drug police units, raises law enforcement salaries, improves law enforcement training and fires drug agents caught accepting bribes.
February 1995 — Raúl Salinas, the older brother of former President Carlos Salinas, is arrested in connection with the 1994 murder of José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the second-in-command of the PRI and a former Salinas brother-in-law whose divorce had sparked a family feud. In January 1999, Salinas is convicted of ordering the murder and is sentenced to 50 years in prison. His conviction is overturned on appeal in June 2005.
September 1995 — Attorney General Lozano issues a 13-page plan to overhaul the federal law enforcement system and calls for a "deep purge" to curb corruption.
November 1996 — Defying President Zedillo, the PRI-controlled Congress pushes through several electoral measures that weaken campaign finance regulation and favor the PRI at the expense of opposition parties.
December 1996 — Zedillo fires Lozano following charges of ineptitude in resolving Mexico's most important criminal matters and accusations of politicizing the Massieu murder investigation.
February 1997 — General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, director of the National Institute to Combat Drugs (INDC—Instituto Nacional para el Combate a las Drogas), is arrested on charges of taking bribes from the Juarez drug cartel and related crimes. He is eventually sentenced to 71 years in prison. Zedillo dissolves the agency and replaces it with the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Health (FEADS—Fiscalía Especializada para la Atención de Delitos contra la Salud de México). Six years later, FEADS is dissolved after six agents are caught engaging in an extortion scheme.
June 1997 — Mexico ratifies the Inter-American Convention against Corruption.
July 1997 — In the first state elections supervised by an independent authority, the conservative PAN wins three additional governorships.
June 1998 — The U.S. Customs Service-led "Operation Casablanca" results in banking officials from 12 of Mexico's 19 largest banks being charged by U.S. authorities with involvement in money laundering related to Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Tons of cocaine and marijuana and nearly 11 billion pesos (US$100 million) are seized over a three-year period.
October 1998 — Swiss officials seize over 980 million pesos (US$90 million) from the accounts of Raúl Salinas, who is alleged to have earned the money by protecting drug shipments through Mexico after his brother became president in 1988.
May 1999 — Mexico ratifies the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions.
July 2000 — Vicente Fox of PAN wins the presidential election, ending 71 years of rule by PRI. The election also diversifies the Congress, bringing the PRI to 209 seats against PAN's 207, with the remaining 84 seats split among several smaller parties.
December 2000 — Three days after taking office, Fox issues a presidential decree establishing the new Intersecretarial Commission for Transparency and Combat against Corruption (Comisión Intersecretarial para la Transparencia y el Combate a la Corrupción), and the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI—Agencia Federal de Investigación), which is put in charge of reforming the notoriously corrupt federal judicial police.
January 2001 — Fox signs an executive order establishing a permanent cabinet-level commission to promote open government and fight corruption. Fox appoints Francisco Barrio as federal comptroller, who operates as the de facto anti-corruption "czar." Barrio immediately sends almost 700 auditors to examine government records and cracks down on state oil company Pemex, the customs service, and the federal system of pharmacies. Within nine months, Barrio's anti-corruption dragnet results in the dismissal or discipline of more than 5,000 public servants.
June 2001 — In what comes to be known as toallagate ("towelgate"), a state-run Internet site discloses that the government was purchasing 5,400 peso (US$500) embroidered towels and 16,000 peso (US$1,500) sheet sets for the president's residence from a supplier that apparently did not exist. The newspaper Milenio reveals that the Fox administration had spent 6.5 million pesos (US$600,000) on remodeling and 11 million pesos (US$1 million) on household items at the presidential mansion. The scandal leads to the resignation of a top Fox aide and the suspension or resignation of several other officials.
April 2002 — The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers publishes a 52-page report that estimates 50 percent to 70 percent of Mexican judges are corrupt. The same month, a separate report estimates that 7 percent of Mexico's GDP is siphoned off via corruption.
June 2002 — President Fox signs the Law for Transparency and Access to Public Government Information (Ley Federal de Transparencia y Acceso a la Información Pública Gubernamental), which enables the public to request information from all state bodies, as well as all private agencies that manage state funds. By mid-2003, Fox's government had released approximately 5,000 previously classified documents to the public.
March 2003 — The PRI is fined more than 980 million pesos (US$90 million) by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE—Instituto Federal Electoral), the Mexican body that regulates elections and campaign finance, for failing to declare about 490 million pesos (US$45 million) of "campaign donations" funneled through a petroleum workers union by the state oil monopoly, Pemex.
March 2003 — Anti-corruption czar Francisco Barrio resigns from his post to run for Congress.
July 2003 — In an embarrassing blow to Fox, the PRI surges back in mid-term elections, winning a number of congressional and mayoral ballots and capturing several governorships. The electoral defeat slows down Fox's plans for economic, labor, and energy reforms. Experts are quick to declare Fox a lame-duck president.
February 2004 — A video broadcast on Mexican television purportedly shows Senator Jorge Emilio Gonzalez, leader of the Mexican Green Party (PVEM—Partido Verde Ecologista de México), negotiating a 22 million peso (US$2 million) bribe in exchange for helping arrange land development projects in Cancun.
March 2004 — Mexican television broadcasts a video showing René Bejarano, a Mexico City legislator and top level official of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD—Partido de la Revolución Democrática), accepting a large sum of cash from businessman Carlos Ahumada. Both Ahumada and Bejarano are charged with corruption and put in jail, but the case against Bejarano is dropped in July 2005.
June 2004 — The Supreme Court rules that cases of "disappearance" (a euphemism for kidnapping and murder) committed by PRI security forces during the "dirty war" can be tried even if they are decades old.
June 2004 — Six Mexican civil society organizations announce that their "citizens' audit" of a Ministry of Health program run by a private company called Provida uncovered numerous examples of corruption. Public outcry leads to an official audit, which confirms the CSOs' findings, the removal of three Health Ministry officials and the initiation of judicial action against Provida and its legal representatives.
April 2005 — The lower house votes to strip Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of his immunity from prosecution for violating a court order in a property dispute. The move is widely perceived to be a political ploy to prevent Lopez Obrador from entering the 2006 presidential race, and the government soon drops the charges.
November 2005 — Mexican television broadcasts a video showing the PRD's former secretary of political relations, Ramón Sosamontes, handing over a suitcase full of dollar bills to Carlos Ahumada, the businessman caught on tape in 2004 allegedly bribing Mexico City legislator René Bejarano. Another video broadcast the same night shows the PRD's former candidate for the Oaxaca governorship, Gabino Cué, asking Ahumada for a campaign contribution.
July 2006 — PAN candidate Felipe Calderon narrowly defeats PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the presidential election.
Jan. 24, 2007 — Reporters for the San Antonino de Velasco-based Radio Calenda, Emilio Santiago and Darío Campos, are attacked by local government supporters while covering a grassroots community council meeting. At least 50 government supporters break into the meeting and attack council members and the reporters. The government officials take Campos and 13 council members to the local government offices where they are held for at least three hours.
April 12, 2007 — President Filipe Calderon signs a legislation that effectively eliminates 'honor crimes' such as criminal defamation, libel, and slander at the federal level, repealing defamation as a criminal offense. This new legislation makes it impossible for a journalist to face prison sentences at the federal level for 'honor crimes'. Defamation, slander and libel are now civil offenses and are subject to monetary damages and corrections of the erroneous material.
June 25, 2007 — Around 300 high-ranking police officers are temporarily suspended in a bid to tackle corruption within the force. Officers will face a 'trust test', which includes drug checks, a lie detector and psychological tests.
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