Family of Kidnapped Mexican Financier Agrees to Ransom
Published: June 25, 1994  In a dramatic, late-night appearance
on national television, representatives of one of Mexico's
richest businessmen have agreed to pay the ransom sought by his
kidnappers and pleaded with them for his prompt release.
Walking onto the set of a live television news program just half
an hour before the 11:30 P.M. deadline set for his execution, a
lawyer for the 50-year-old businessman, Alfredo Harp Helu, said
on Thursday night that his family would pay the undisclosed
amount that the kidnappers had demanded.  "Before God, whom Mr.
Harp and all of us have invoked each day, and before the public
to which the kidnappers have turned, we call upon them now to
free Mr. Harp as soon as possible," the lawyer, Jose Aguilera
Medrano, said. One of Many Kidnappings  Mr. Harp, the president
of the country's largest financial-services conglomerate,
Banamex-Accival, is only one of the latest among hundreds of
wealthy Mexicans abducted in the pas