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CENTRAL AMERICA |
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Gangs Demand “Christmas Bonus” from
Guatemalan Bus Companies
GUATEMALA – The gangs that extort protection
money from bus operators are demanding a
“Christmas bonus” of $240,000, an
association representing Guatemala’s transit
companies said Friday.
“The amount demanded is greater than what
has been paid in previous years,” Gamaliel
Chin, president of the Intercity Routes
Transport Association, told reporters,
adding that his group started paying the
“bonus” to the gangs more than three years
ago.
Chin spoke of the murder of four bus drivers
this week in less than 24 hours as “acts of
pressure” aimed at getting the owners
association to pay up.
So far this year, according to bus owners’
statistics, 148 drivers and 50 assistants
have been slain for refusing to make
protection payments.
This “Christmas bonus,” according to Chin,
is in addition to the protection money that
these groups damand on a daily basis of the
close to 800 buses that make up the
association he directs.
Drivers pay between $20 and $40 per day for
the right to circulate in gang territory.
Guatemala’s PNC national police says that
many of the victims have been killed even
though they paid the extortion money.
Although no official figures exist, transit
company owners estimate that to date in
2009, under the pressure of threats, they
have had to pay some $1.8 million to the
extortionists.
PNC director Baltazar Barrios told reporters
that a specific plan exists to provide
security for buses.
“The first thing required is not to pay the
protection money and to report the threats,”
Barrios said.
Police say they have captured more than 460
members of the extortion gangs this year.
A PNC spokesman, Donald Gonzalez, recently
told Efe that while young gang members
collect the payments and commit the murders,
“those who are behind these incidents, those
who direct the extortions and give the
orders are well organized groups of
organized crime.”
Last year, according to official statistics,
135 drivers, 41 assistants and 53 taxi
drivers were slain. EFE |
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