Mexico Mexico Officials Blame Ex-Police in 2 Kidnapings : Crime: Prominent businessmen were abducted last month, apparently by well-organized gunmen seeking financial gain.

MEXICO CITY — Government authorities believe that former police officers, fired during an anti-corruption campaign, are responsible for the recent kidnapings of two prominent Mexico City businessmen.

Joaquin Vargas Guajaro, whose family owns the pay-television network Multivision, and Jorge Espinosa Mirales, owner of the Grupo Printaform computer company, were abducted separately last month by apparently well-organized bands of gunmen seeking financial gain.

The kidnapers made an initial demand of $50 million for Vargas, whose family had been in the news as favored buyers for two government television stations worth several hundred million dollars. Espinosa’s abductors reportedly have demanded $15 million for his release.

Officials ruled out any possible political motivations for the kidnapings. Mexico suffered from a wave of politically motivated abductions in the 1970s, when guerrilla groups were active.

“They (the kidnapers) could be ex-police or ex-police connected to groups of drug traffickers,” a senior government official said, asking that he not be identified by name. “This is a sort of undesired sub-product of the big blows that have been delivered to the police forces.”

Under international scrutiny as he woos foreign investment and negotiates a North American free-trade agreement with the United States, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari has taken steps to clean up Mexico’s notoriously corrupt police forces. Salinas established a government human rights commission to investigate allegations of murder, systematic torture and other abuses by state and federal police.

In the last year, Atty. Gen. Ignacio Morales Lechuga says he has fired 268 federal judicial police suspected of corruption and human rights abuses. Police officers frequently are accused of involvement in narcotics trafficking and have been implicated in a number of bank robberies.

The two high-profile kidnapings--plus a series of abductions in the Mexican provinces, particularly the states of Guerrero and Nayarit--have unnerved the Mexican business community at a time when Salinas is seeking their confidence and economic stability. If the kidnapings were to continue, they could threaten the president’s hard-fought recovery program.

The government has set up a committee of officials from the Interior Ministry, which oversees state security, the federal attorney general’s office, the Mexico City attorney general’s office and state governments to investigate.

Police have begun to review files of former agents and to track their whereabouts, but the investigation has been limited at the request of the victims’ families, who fear for the safety of the captives, the government officials said.

Unlike in the United States--where it is against the law to negotiate a ransom privately without notifying police--Mexicans may legally deal with extortionists on their own.

There has been no organized response to the kidnapings from the business community, although some businessmen have held “informal” meetings with Salinas to discuss the situation, according to an Interior Ministry official.

“People are quite concerned,” said a young industrialist from one of Mexico’s wealthiest families. “Is it one or two (kidnapings) and then it’s going to fade away? You don’t know.”

Some businessmen also reportedly are seeking added protection from private security companies. “Our phones have been ringing pretty much off the hook,” said Michael Hershman, president of the Grupo Fairfax de Mexico, an international investigation and security company. “Criminals have begun to realize kidnaping in Mexico is darn good business with virtually no risk. People are willing to pay and police have been terribly ineffective.”

Hershman said the “growing schism between rich and poor” could provoke further kidnapings. “There’s a great deal of jealousy.”

The Vargases represent the new class of Mexican wealthy who have profited from Salinas’ liberal economic program. In addition to Multivision, the family owns the radio network StereoRey, the production company TeleRey and Wings restaurant chain.

According to a government source, Vargas’ kidnapers told his father they knew he could pay a $50-million ransom because they had read in the newspaper that he would bid hundreds of millions of dollars to buy Channels 7 and 13, two government-owned television stations.

Vargas, 42, was abducted from his car outside his Mexico City home May 13 by about 10 men wielding machine guns, according to information from his chauffeur.

Espinosa, 62, was captured May 19 or 20.