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By David Monjaraz
MEXICO CITY, July 6 (Reuters) - A long-awaited audit into Mexico's multi-billion dollar bank bail-out trust is almost complete and a preliminary report was delivered to the body that oversees government accounts on Tuesday, lawmakers said.
``Serious irregularities were detected in many categories,'' said Fauzi Hamdam, president of the lower house's financial supervisory committee, which is overseeing the audit of the controversial trust, known as Fobaproa.
But Hamdam, a deputy from the conservative National Action Party, said the final version of the audit would not be made public until July 19.
Canadian auditor Michael Mackey is carrying out the examination of Fobaproa, which acquired $65 billion in bad debts when it rescued the banks after the 1994 peso crash.
Lawmakers demanded the audit as a condition for passing reforms to the trust late last year. The banks would have to assume fully as losses any fraudulent loans detected by the audit.
Hamdam said Mackey's preliminary report ran to 300 pages, but regretted that its scope was limited by what he said was the Finance Ministry's refusal to provide details of some of the operations carried out by Banco Union.
Banco Union's former chief executive, Carlos Cabal Peniche, is being held in an Australian jail awaiting extradition to Mexico on fraud charges totalling $700 million.
Finance Ministry officials said providing details about specific transactions would violate bank secrecy laws.
``The Finance Ministry cannot reply favourably to the request of the legislators because doing so would violate the rule of law,'' the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
But opposition deputies said some operations at Banco Union, bailed out by Fobaproa during the crisis, were linked to the ruling party's 1994 election campaigns, including that of President Ernesto Zedillo.
That effectively amounted to the ruling party using taxpayers' money to fund its accession to power, they said.
Hamdam said last week lawmakers could resort to legal action to overturn the Finance Ministry's decision.
After being analysed by the government account supervisor, the results of the audit would be handed to Fobaproa's successor, the Institute for Bank Deposit Protection (IPAB).
IPAB will exclude any illicit loans from its loss-sharing programme and may pursue legal action against those responsible for incurring such debts.