CHICAGO -- Mexican officials say they are holding suburban Chicago business executive Richard Flynn in jail because Flynn was convicted of defrauding their government.
Flynn's wife and boss say he is being held hostage in a dispute about how much money a now-bankrupt firm owes the Mexican government.
Catherine Flynn has started a letter-writing campaign in hopes of freeing her ailing husband from a Mexicanjail. She said since his imprisonment, Flynn has suffered two heart attacks.
Mrs. Flynn has sent hundreds of letters, urging friends to write President Reagan and other officials and to contribute to a legal defense fund to pay for her husband's appeal.
'How can one individual, employed by a company, be held personally responsible for a corporate debt?' Mrs. Flynn asked. 'I love Rich and I want him home -- that's the bottom line.'
She told the Chicago Sun-Times her husband was jailed Feb. 10, 1982, after a business deal collapsed.
Flynn, 48, was jailed when he went to Mexico to renegotiate a printing contract with the Mexican government. Flynn was fined $1.5 million and was sentenced to six years in prison in February.
Mrs. Flynn, a nurse at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and her husband's former boss both contend the Mexican government has taken Flynn hostage. Efforts by Sen. Charles Percy, R-Ill., and Mrs. Flynn's attorney to free him have been unsuccessful.
Flynn was vice president of Bob Schwermer and Associates in Arlington Heights when he flew to Mexico to discuss repayment terms between Schwermer and Tallares Graficos, a printing firm partly owned by the Mexican government.
Percy's office and Mrs. Flynn's Chicago attorney, Susan M. Keegan, said Schwermer received about $1.5 million from Talleres Graficos for paper products. Some of the products never were delivered because of Schwermer's financial problems.
The company was hit hard by devaluation of the Mexican peso two years ago and went into bankruptcy, the Sun-Times said.
Bob Schwermer said $1.086 million in assets from his old firm was turned over to the Mexican firm in what he and Flynn believed was a settlement of the business deal. But the Mexicans decided that was not enough, he said.
'Rich went down there to straighten things out and they held him hostage,' Schwermer said. 'They came up with a trumped-up charge of fraud against Rich.'
'The Mexicans do not say that Flynn was taken hostage,' a Percy spokesman said. 'They say he was held pending resolution of the case, charged and convicted of defrauding the Mexican government.'
