Mexican lawmakers push for probe of minister

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's lower house of Congress could set up a commission to probe graft allegations that are threatening to bring down a top ally of President Felipe Calderon, deputies said on Wednesday.

A scandal has blown up this week over a batch of oil sector contracts that Calderon's right-hand man, Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino, signed over to a family business as an official in the previous government.

Lower House Speaker Ruth Zavaleta of the left-wing opposition said on Wednesday Mourino should resign over the contracts with state oil monopoly Pemex between 2000 and 2004.

"The law is very clear, the law says no public servant can sign contracts with a private company and the government," Javier Gonzalez, lower house coordinator for the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, told reporters.

"Ethically speaking he should have resigned a long time ago. There has to be a commission to investigate these things," he said.

Mourino, 36, is a rising star in the ruling conservative party. He was appointed in January to help the government push economic reforms, including a politically thorny oil sector law, through a divided Congress.

Allegations he used his political influence in government energy posts to benefit his family's gasoline business could damage Calderon's hopes of getting opposition party backing for a law to permit private partnerships in oil production.

The accusations have been led by firebrand leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who says his 2006 election defeat to Calderon was rigged and is a staunch opponent of private capital in the state-controlled oil sector.

Lopez Obrador has also accused Mourino of signing contracts with Pemex for his personal gain when he was an adviser to Calderon during his previous tenure as energy minister.

Mourino, a member of the Congress energy committee between 2001 and 2003, said this week his family's company had contracts with Pemex since he was a teenager and he never intervened as a public servant to benefit his family.

The centrist opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party also backs a congressional investigation to go with a probe opened this week by the attorney general's office.

"It has to be clarified, that's the important thing, so there's no doubt left," said the party's lower house coordinator, Emilio Gamboa.

Calderon's National Action Party would not block a move to set up an investigating commission, its lower house coordinator Hector Larios said.

(Reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez; writing by Catherine Bremer; editing by Mohammad Zargham)