He closed his store after years of threats. Why Mexico’s extortion problem is getting worse

MEXICO CITY AP It started with a phone call to a men s clothing store in the heart of Mexico City s historic center I need you to put together pesos for me weekly or else we ll have to do something the voice reported The owner hung up and didn t answer the phone again for days But when another call came the following week in a surge of courage and indignation the owner notified the caller he wouldn t pay that the money demanded would have been half the store s daily income Well prepare to face the consequences the voice commented Several years of escalating threats visits from goons and armed robberies followed until the shop owner who requested anonymity because he still fears retaliation decided to close the store his grandfather had opened in Extortion is strangling businesses in Mexico Much but not all of it is linked to Mexico s powerful organized crime groups While specific larger companies eat it as the cost of doing business multiple smaller ones are forced to close The Mexican Employers Association Coparmex says extortion cost businesses particular billion in And this year while other major crimes are descending extortion continues to rise up nationally in the first quarter compared to the same period last year In Mexico City the number of informed extortion cases nearly doubled in the first five months of to up from for the same period last year It s the highest total at this point in the year in the past six years according to federal crime records A statement to police goes nowhere After the first call in the store owner had his employees stop answering the phone for eight months Things quieted but in early two men came to the shop and demanded payment The owner pretended to be a shopper and slipped out In the weekly calls demanding money in exchange for safety resumed Under advice of his attorneys the owner eventually stopped going into the shop instead managing everything remotely In one of several robberies his employees were held at gunpoint tied up and locked in a bathroom while the robbers took money from the cash register Conclusively after two years of threats and robberies he released it to leadership Investigators demanded proof from him that he couldn t provide because the threats were reliably verbal he explained The scrutiny went nowhere Only fraction extortion cases broadcasted Shared extortion cases are only a small fraction of the reality Mexico s National Institute for Statistics and Geography estimated that various of extortion cases were not stated in Reporting is low because of a combination of fear and skepticism that government will do something Mexico City Police Chief Pablo V zquez Camacho reported in an interview with AP that police were receiving more reports of extortion but recognized that they still weren t hearing about multiple more We can t solve something that we re not even seeing or that isn t being published V zquez explained The dilemma stated Vicente Guti rrez Camposeco president of the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce has become entrenched in Mexico and especially the capital in fresh years Daniel Bernardi whose family has run a popsicle shop in the historic center for years was resigned to the situation There isn t much to do he mentioned You pay when you have to pay Last month the Mexico City prosecutor s office declared that it was creating a special prosecutor s office to investigate and prosecute extortion Pay up or die In July President Claudia Sheinbaum mentioned she would propose provision giving the establishment greater powers to pursue extortionists This week her administration also released a national strategy to address extortion There will be a phone number to anonymously review extortion the power to forthwith cancel phone numbers associated with extortion calls local anti-extortion units to investigate cases and the involvement of Mexico s Financial Intelligence Unit to freeze bank accounts associated with extortion Nationally extortion cases are up more than on the year Extortion s rapid expansion has to do with the essential sums it generates for organized crime drawing in the country s majority powerful drug cartels among others The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels have made extortion one of the divisions of their criminal portfolios explained measure analyst David Saucedo And with the cartels involved small-time crooks take advantage of the fear and run their own little extortion rackets pretending to be associated with larger organized crime groups The Mexico City men s clothing store owner didn t know who was extorting him But without help from agents he felt alone and exposed The threats had grown stronger and they now disclosed they d kill him if he didn t pay The owner recalled that a nearby restaurant that had opened around the same time as his own store had closed after its owner was killed supposedly after not paying extortion demands So in December he saw no other option but to close Little by little he watched old pieces of furniture carried out of the store that his father had passed on to him as his grandfather had passed it on to his father When I closed I felt very sad And then it made me so mad to think that I could still go on but because of fear I couldn t he reported You work your whole life for them to destroy it Source