Business owners say they paid between 1,200 and 1,500 pesos for a camera connection required for Tulum business licenses, a procedure municipal officials now confirm should cost nothing.
The complaints surfaced at a meeting between private sector representatives and municipal officials, reported on July 29. Owners at that table said the money changed hands without a receipt from the municipal treasury, and that the charge was presented to them as part of the licensing process.
Every business that wants to open or stay open in Tulum clears the same counter, and that paperwork now includes a security camera wired into the municipal monitoring network. If a free step in the process was being charged, the money came out of hundreds of small operators during a year when their revenue was already thinning.
A document that unlocked the rest of the paperwork
The sequence described by the owners was straightforward. A business installed its cameras, arranged the link to the public surveillance network, and then received a document certifying the connection. Without that certificate, the license file could not move forward.
The certificate arrived only after payment, according to the accounts given at the meeting. In several cases no official receipt from the Tesorería Municipal accompanied the transaction, which is what turned a routine administrative step into a complaint.
"They told us it is free"
Guillermo Fernández, one of the business owners present, said the payments were made because they looked like part of the process.
"They were charging us between 1,200 and 1,500 pesos to hand over the registration that let us continue with the license. In the meeting they told us that the procedure is free and should not generate any cost."
Municipal officials at the meeting repeated that integrating private cameras into the monitoring centers carries no charge for taxpayers. Several attendees said the answer caught them off guard, since they had been asked for money to obtain the same certificate.
A businesswoman from the restaurant sector, who asked not to be named, said this was not one isolated case. Owners paid, she said, because they believed the charge was obligatory and feared their permits would be delayed or denied if they questioned it.
Why Tulum business licenses now depend on a camera
The camera requirement is not informal. It sits inside the municipal revenue law, which conditions the issuance of an operating license on having security equipment linked to the monitoring system. Installation and connection are handled by municipal public security personnel.
Mayor Diego Castañón Trejo said on January 31 that more than 700 private cameras were feeding the municipal C2 and the C5 center in Cancún, a figure that had roughly doubled since September 2025, when the count stood between 320 and 350. He has described the network as central to arrests and to a drop in homicides, and the city has warned that businesses without a connected camera face fines.
That pressure matters here. A merchant told to connect a camera or lose a license has little appetite to argue over a 1,500 peso charge at the window.
Business leaders want the payments traced and the requirements published in writing
The private sector representatives asked the city government to open an internal investigation, to determine who collected the money, and to establish responsibility if irregularities are confirmed. They also asked for something more basic. They want the current requirements for obtaining and renewing an operating license published in an official bulletin, so that no future applicant has to take a counter clerk's word for what a step costs.
Complaints about permit charges in Tulum did not begin with the cameras. In June, TV Azteca reported accounts from local business owners who described cash-only payments for administrative procedures, sharp and unexplained increases in the cost of routine changes to their licenses, and closures they interpreted as retaliation after speaking publicly. None of those accounts has been resolved in public.
Eight officers dismissed this year
On July 30, Castañón Trejo held a working meeting with municipal public security secretary Edgar Aguilar and traffic director Jessica Orozco and restated a zero tolerance position on corruption, saying eight officers had been removed from their posts so far in 2026 for irregular conduct. Aguilar said complaints received by the municipality are forwarded to the Fiscalía General del Estado, and the city published a reporting line, 984 198 68 65, for residents and visitors to flag conduct by public servants.
That statement addressed the police corporations. It made no reference to the camera payments.
City Hall has not said whether an investigation into the charges has been opened, how many businesses paid, or who issued the certificates. No municipal employee has been publicly identified in connection with the payments, and no complaint tied to them has been reported filed with the state prosecutor. Until one of those answers arrives, the only official position on the record is that the service was always free.
Were you asked to pay for connecting your cameras to the C2 or C5 before receiving your license? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.