Quintana Roo Business Group Moves to Shield Companies From Extortion and Protection Rackets

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo — A Quintana Roo business association is strengthening its ties with security and law enforcement agencies so that owners and managers know how to respond to extortion attempts and demands for protection payments, the group’s president said.

Marcos Gutiérrez, who leads Empresarios por Quintana Roo, said the group organized a forum aimed at opening direct channels of communication with the institutions responsible for public security and criminal prosecutions. The goal, he said, is for business owners to understand the procedures they must follow and the authorities they should contact if they receive threats or face extortion attempts.

Gutiérrez said the initiative is not meant to create privileged treatment or a special one-stop desk for business owners. Instead, he described it as an effort to build preventive mechanisms inside businesses and to improve coordination between the private sector and institutions, given that extortion can affect both the productive sector and the wider public.

He said none of the association’s members have reported being victims of extortion, protection racket payments or other high-impact crimes. Even so, he argued that the absence of complaints within the organization does not eliminate the risk, and that the group wants to build the confidence needed to report such crimes so that business owners do not face threats alone.

Asked about security conditions in Playa del Carmen, Gutiérrez declined to offer an assessment, noting that he lives in Cancún and lacks enough information to make an objective judgment. He said he perceives a decline in extortion and high-impact crime in Cancún in recent months, but acknowledged he has no figures to support that impression, describing it as a personal observation only.