Mexico's president pledges to disclose personal assets

Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto Wednesday pledged to publicly disclose his personal assets, according to media reports.

"To really gain the trust of the society, I have decided to make my personal finance disclosure public, put it out in the open ... and leave it to the scrutiny of all the Mexican society," the president said at an official event in the central Mexican town of Alvaro Obregon, Michoacan.

The announcement followed recent revelations that the president's wife, former TV soap opera actress Angelica Rivera, bought an all-white multimillion-dollar mansion in the capital from Grupo Higa, a Mexican firm that formed part of a consortium that in October won Mexico's first high speed train project in a deal worth billions of U.S. dollars.

The contract of the project was abruptly canceled at the same time news surfaced of the presidential "white house."

Rivera appeared in a radio program Tuesday night to justify the deal, saying "I have been working since I was 15," and that a successful career in television had made her "an economically independent woman."

She also said she was going to "put the house up for sale," so it won't "continue to be an excuse to offend or defame my family." Enditem