Sinaloa prosecutor reports no protection-racket complaints
By Cartel Insider Wire Desk · Edited by Mica Treviño
Original reporting: Noroeste Culiacán
What happened
Claudia Zulema Sánchez Kondo said her office has no documented cobro de piso complaints, while acknowledging reports involving other forms of extortion.
Reporting and context
Sinaloa’s prosecutor’s office has no documented complaints specifically alleging protection-money demands against merchants and business owners, state prosecutor Claudia Zulema Sánchez Kondo said, according to Noroeste.
Asked about the killing of a barber in southern Sinaloa and accounts of possible extortion against businesses, Sánchez Kondo said investigators had registered the case as a homicide. She said the office lacked evidence linking it to protection-money demands, known in Mexico as cobro de piso.
Noroeste reported that the prosecutor urged people to file formal complaints so authorities could investigate. When asked directly whether her office had complaints specifically involving cobro de piso, she answered no.
She acknowledged that formal complaints about other forms of extortion do exist. Among the conduct the office encounters most frequently, she described telephone calls in which criminals deceive victims and isolate them from their families, a practice known as virtual kidnapping.
The prosecutor provided no figures for extortion complaints and did not specify how many involved merchants or business owners. Her statement concerned what her office had documented; it did not establish whether businesses were experiencing unreported demands.
Source: Noroeste