Extortion strangling Mexican companies, forcing closures and worry

[ad_1] MEXICO CITY (AP) — It began with a cellphone name to a males’s clothes retailer within the coronary heart of Mexico Metropolis’s historic heart. “I would like you to place collectively 10,000 pesos ($500) for me weekly, or else we’ll need to do one thing,” the voice mentioned.

The proprietor hung up and didn’t reply the cellphone once more for days. However when one other name got here the next week, in a surge of braveness and indignation the proprietor instructed the caller he wouldn’t pay, that the cash demanded would have been half the shop’s each day earnings. “Properly, put together to face the consequences ,” the voice mentioned.

A number of years of escalating threats, visits from goons and armed robberies adopted till the store proprietor, who requested anonymity as a result of he nonetheless fears retaliation, determined to shut the shop his grandfather had opened in 1936.

Extortion is strangling companies in Mexico. A lot, however not all, of it's linked to Mexico’s highly effective organized crime teams. Whereas some larger companies eat it as the price of doing enterprise, many smaller ones are pressured to shut.

Pedestrians traverse Francisco I. Madero Avenue in downtown Mexico Metropolis, Thursday, July 10, 2025. (AP Photograph/Fernando Llano)

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The Mexican Employers’ Affiliation, Coparmex, says extortion value companies some $1.3 billion in 2023. And this 12 months, whereas different main crimes are descending, extortion continues to rise, up 10% nationally within the first quarter in comparison with the identical interval final 12 months.

In Mexico City , the variety of reported extortion instances almost doubled within the first 5 months of 2025 to 498, up from 249 for a similar interval final 12 months. It’s the best complete at this level within the 12 months previously six years, in accordance with federal crime information.

A report back to police goes nowhere After the primary name in 2019, the shop proprietor had his workers cease answering the cellphone for eight months. Issues quieted, however in early 2020, two males got here to the store and demanded cost. The proprietor pretended to be a client and slipped out.

In 2021, the weekly calls demanding cash in change for “safety” resumed. Underneath recommendation of his attorneys, the proprietor finally stopped going into the store, as an alternative managing every little thing remotely.

In considered one of a number of robberies, his workers had been held at gunpoint, tied up and locked in a toilet, whereas the robbers took cash from the money register.

Lastly, after two years of threats and robberies, he reported it to authorities. Investigators demanded proof from him that he couldn’t present as a result of the threats had been at all times verbal, he mentioned. The investigation went nowhere.

Mexico Metropolis police patrol a neighborhood in Mexico Metropolis, Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photograph/Marco Ugarte)

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Solely fraction extortion instances reported Reported extortion instances are solely a small fraction of the fact.

Mexico’s Nationwide Institute for Statistics and Geography estimated that some 97% of extortion cases were not reported in 2023.

Reporting is low due to a mix of worry and skepticism that authorities will do one thing.

Mexico Metropolis Police Chief Pablo Vázquez Camacho mentioned in an interview with AP that police had been receiving extra reviews of extortion, however acknowledged that they nonetheless weren’t listening to about many extra. “We will’t remedy one thing that we’re not even seeing or that isn’t being reported,” Vázquez mentioned.

The issue, mentioned Vicente Gutiérrez Camposeco, president of the Mexico Metropolis Chamber of Commerce, “has turn out to be entrenched” in Mexico and particularly the capital lately.

Daniel Bernardi, whose household has run a popsicle store within the historic heart for 85 years, was resigned to the scenario. “There isn’t a lot to do,” he mentioned. “You pay when you need to pay.”

Final month, the Mexico Metropolis prosecutor’s workplace introduced that it was making a particular prosecutor’s workplace to research and prosecute extortion.

Mexico Metropolis’s Secretary of Safety Pablo Vázquez Camacho provides an interview in his workplace in Mexico Metropolis, Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photograph/Marco Ugarte)

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Pay up or die In July, President Claudia Sheinbaum mentioned she would suggest laws giving the federal government higher powers to pursue extortionists.

This week, her administration additionally introduced a nationwide technique to handle extortion. There will probably be a cellphone quantity to anonymously report extortion; the ability to instantly cancel cellphone numbers related to extortion calls; native anti-extortion models to research instances and the involvement of Mexico’s Monetary Intelligence Unit to freeze financial institution accounts related to extortion.

Nationally, extortion instances are up greater than 6% on the 12 months.

Extortion’s speedy growth has to do with the numerous sums it generates for organized crime, drawing within the nation’s strongest drug cartels, amongst others. The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Era cartels have made extortion “one of many divisions of their felony portfolios,” mentioned safety analyst David Saucedo.

And with the cartels concerned, small-time crooks take advantage of the fear and run their very own little extortion rackets, pretending to be related to bigger organized crime teams.

The Mexico Metropolis males’s clothes retailer proprietor didn’t know who was extorting him. However with out assist from authorities, he felt alone and uncovered. The threats had grown stronger and so they now mentioned they’d kill him if he didn’t pay.

The proprietor recalled {that a} close by restaurant that had opened across the identical time as his personal retailer, had closed after its proprietor was killed, supposedly after not paying extortion calls for.

So in December 2023, he noticed no different possibility however to shut. Little by little he watched previous items of furnishings carried out of the shop that his father had handed on to him as his grandfather had handed it on to his father.

“After I closed I felt very unhappy. After which it made me so mad to assume that I may nonetheless go on, however due to worry I couldn’t,” he mentioned. “You're employed your complete life for them to destroy it.”

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