OFFICERS from the Mexican Attorney General's office travelled to Dublin over the weekend to interview the former Mexican president, Mr Carlos Salinas de Gortari, an unconfirmed report in El Universal newspaper has said.
Meanwhile a source close to Mr Salinas confirmed the former president was "is in the process of being asked" to give evidence in the murder and "illicit enrichment" case against his brother. He may also be asked about the 1994 murder of Luis Donaldo Colosio, Mr Salinas's chosen successor.
Mr Salinas's presence in Dublin has provoked an international journalistic hunt, with Mexican and US journalists desperate for him to fill in missing pieces in the jigsaw of recent political scandals.
The former president, whose departure from office in December 1994 was closely followed by an economic crisis, has been living in self-imposed exile in Dublin for almost eight months. He is currently regularising his residency status in Ireland with the Aliens Registration Office.
Mr Salinas's elder brother, Raul, is charged with masterminding the murder of the general secretary of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Jose "Pepe" Francisco Ruiz Massieu, in 1994, and of inexplicably acquiring at least $120 million, while in a state job to which Mr Salinas appointed him.
Last week a former bodyguard of Mr Raul Salinas claimed that a year after Ruiz Massieu's murder, he and two other military officers were personally rewarded by the former president for their "loyalty to my brother". The three were given several thousand dollars to attend an English-language course in the UK, he said.
Last week Mr Justo Ceja, former private secretary to Mr Carlos Salinas, failed to respond to three summonses to give evidence in the case, so far marked by an absence of hard facts and counter-accusations of rigging the evidence.
For almost two years the Mexican Attorney General's office has hinted - most broadly last week - that Mr Carlos Salinas was to be called to give evidence. The Salinas source said the former president had previously expressed a willingness to do so "anywhere, anytime".
Mexico's embassy in Dublin has been suggested as a possible venue for legal officials to question Mr Salinas. Denying that his presence in Ireland had anything to do with the absence of an extradition treaty between Ireland and Mexico, the source said that Mr Salinas was very willing to give evidence in Mexico.
Apart from an exclusive interview in The Irish Times last August the once hugely popular president has kept a low profile
"out of respect for President [Ernesto] Zedillo", his successor, he has said. Discreet Garda inquiries began after that interview.
The Garda Press Office would make no comment on the aliens registration case. The Department of Justice said that if Mr Salinas planned to stay beyond three months he was required to apply to the aliens office. The Salinas source said: "We contacted them on our own initiative" and the application for permission to stay in the country was going through the normal procedures.
Stressing respect for the rules in Ireland, the source said: "We are not looking for any kind of special status." In Ireland Mr Salinas's party includes his new wife and their young daughter, as well as several staff.
The Mexican Attorney General's special prosecutor's office is trying to prove that human remains found on a ranch belonging to Mr Raul Salinas are those of a missing congressman, Manuel Munoz Rocha.
Proceso, a leading Mexican magazine, says a long-standing PRI activist claimed to have seen Mr Raul Salinas standing over Munoz Rocha's body with a bloody baseball bat in his hands.
Mr Raul Salinas's former chief bodyguard, Lt Col Antonio Chavez, has said his boss asked him to help dispose of a white VW Jetta which he now supposes to have belonged to Munoz Rocha.