Aides to captured Mexican drug kingpin arrested for extorting mine owners

Two purported aides to the captured head of the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel, Servando “La Tuta” Gomez Martinez, have been arrested for allegedly extorting mine owners in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, prosecutors said.

Michoacan’s Attorney General’s Office identified the suspects only as Juvenal B. and Julio T.

They were allegedly tasked with contacting “mine owners in the region and demanding large sums of money in return for permission to continue operating,” it said in a statement Thursday.

Juvenal B. “threatened and dispossessed the legitimate owners of several properties” in the town of Arteaga, and those mines were taken over by the cartel, the investigation showed.

The state AG’s office launched a criminal investigation after complaints were filed in 2014.

These latest arrests come six weeks after a Federal Police special operations unit captured Gomez Martinez and eight other members of the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) cartel in Morelia, Michoacan’s capital, on Feb. 27.

Separately, armed robbers stole $8.5 million worth of gold last week from a mine in the northwestern state of Sinaloa operated by Canada’s McEwen Mining.

The company’s president and chairman said afterward in a television interview that McEwan has a “good relationship” with the area cartels and asks them for permission before conducting exploration work.

A few days later, the head of Mexico’s Association of Mining Engineers, Metallurgists and Geologists, Manuel Reyes, acknowledged that mining companies need to obtain the approval of local cartels before working their deposits.