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Kidnapping risk is higher than ever

Executives are more vulnerable than ever to kidnapping and abduction, yet only 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and even fewer small companies, carry kidnap and ransom insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute (III). It calculates that annual kidnapping totals worldwide grew by more than 100 percent between 1995 (830 kidnappings) and 1999 (1,728 kidnappings).

Then there's the Mexican kidnapping threat. While Colombian kidnappings are highly organized crimes, Mexico is notorious for "express kidnappings," where assailants wait roadside until a likely victim — namely, one in a new, fancy car — drives up. The victims are forced out of the cars, sometimes violently, and taken to ATM machines. They are forced to withdraw money, then set free.

Coonan argues that in the increasingly global economy, its small businesses that can benefit most from kidnap and ransom insurance. "Larger companies have huge risk-management teams and are generally much savvier about using security consultants, knowing what their exposure is. They take as many protective measures as they can," Coonan says. For instance, using a security consultant and internal research, a large company can track the movements of the FARC, avoiding Colombia at times when the rebel group seems likely to strike.

Who needs it?

Colombia leads the world in kidnappings. Colombian kidnappings are generally well-planned, professional jobs, often involving extensive research on the company, surveillance of the kidnapping target, and high ransom demands. In a widely publicized 1998 abduction, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist rebel group) kidnapped Canadian mining company employee Ed Leonard, then traded him for Norbert Reinhardt, a company executive who felt compelled to take Leonard's place. Reinhardt, who did not know Leonard, was eventually released in exchange for $170,000 in ransom. (No word on whether an insurance company was involved in the negotiations.)

Top 10 countries in total kidnappings, 2000 Source: Control Risks Group

Russian Federation
Venezuela
Brazil
China
Colombia
El Salvador
India
Malaysia
Mexico
Philippines

These results are based on kidnappings Control Risks Group has confirmed and about which it has gathered information. They may not represent the full extent of the problem. The list is alphabetical and not in order of risk.

Don't resist your attackers.

Try to befriend the kidnappers, not for escape purposes (don't try it!) but to make the atmosphere more bearable.

Try to keep a routine of exercise, reading, writing, or whatever you can do to make the time pass.

Above all, don't give up hope — remember that a large team of co-workers, family members, and security specialists is working for your release.

Kidnapping Clips

Kidnapping: It's now a rich industry in India
27 Jan 2005, 0029 hrs IST, Abhay Mohan Jha, TNN

PATNA: When National Hydro Power Corporation (NHPC) jointly bagged the ambitious Rs 19,000-crore rural road construction project in Bihar under the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojna last year, its chairman and managing director Yogendra Prasad appeared impatient at media scepticism about its smooth execution.

"We have executed several projects in insurgency-hit North-East and even in Jammu and Kashmir," he boasted. A month later, the CMD was spending sleepless nights — two of his company's senior technocrats were abducted on way to Bettiah.

A two-week drama followed, which came to an end only after one of the captives, chief engineer KK Singh, escaped from his abductors in UP; the abductors later put the other captive, general manager T Mandal, aboard a Delhi-bound train at Narkatiaganj in Champaran.

The men had demanded Rs 10 crore as ransom, to be paid through hawala channels in Mumbai. While the NHPC denied that any ransom was paid, the claim was met with much scepticism.

In Bihar, where kidnapping has become more of an industry, such denials are invariably tagged along whenever captives return home safely.

If you believe in statistics, sample this: 32,085 cases of kidnapping were reported between 1992 and September 2004 in the state, about 20% of these were for ransom, according to police records.

Police records don't tell the whole story, though. "So wide and octopus-like has the grip of criminals on society become and so complete the lack of confidence of the people in the administration that only a fraction of the cases is reported to the police," a People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) fact-finding report stated in 1994, adding, "instead, people prefer to go for a direct negotiation with the kidnappers." The public's cynicism stems from the perception that politicians are stakeholders in this cash-rich "industry".

From being mere henchmen of politicians, "many criminals have themselves joined politics and become MLAs and MPs... This has contributed to the collapse of the rule of law," a report of the Bihar's unit of People's Union of Civil Liberties stated way back in 1988. The Patna High Court in December last ordered storming of Bihar jails. The seizure from incarcerated political strongmen only corroborated the popular view.

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South Asia
Jan 24, 2007

Kidnapping, India's new growth industry
By Indrajit Basu

KOLKATA - Guess what is the current status symbol in Assam - a tea-growing state in northeastern India - these days? It is not the latest-model multi-utility vehicle, the price of which could buy a small tea factory, nor a journey from the airport to the tea garden in the company-owned helicopter. Important business people or politicians are identified by the escort vehicle with gun-toting security guards that accompany their cars when they move around in the terrorist-stricken state.

"It is a big deterrent for the criminals who kidnap to earn easy money," said a non-resident owner of one of the largest tea gardens there. "These are the unemployed young men in the region who have turned United Liberation Front of Asom [ULFA] activists."

Like many other "big businessmen", this tea-garden owner too has spent a small fortune over the past few years clandestinely paying "insurance" money to ULFA, a separatist armed opposition group that has been classified as a terrorist organization by India. ULFA funds its operations primarily through extortion and kidnappings.

When a kidnapping involves a high-profile or a wealthy victim, the family or the company rarely reveals the actual amount paid for ransom. However, as much as half a million US dollars - a figure that was reportedly paid by the family to release a Kolkata-based industrialist kidnapped in July 2001- is not unknown. But it can be as little as $500 for poor victims.

Ransom is almost always paid up front to release a high-profile or a wealthy kidnapped victim, although when the kidnappers get nabbed, the money is usually recovered. But very often, when a kidnap involves a victim from a comparatively poor family - mostly in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh - that cannot pay the ransom demanded, the victim either gets killed or sold to a brothel. This is especially true of children and women.

Government officials say that between 1999 and 2005, about 40 people working in the tea industry were kidnapped in the northeastern states, comprising Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya. Most were released after a ransom was paid, but some were killed.

But the problem is not just in the northeast. With India rushing to open its economy to global forces, some of the world's major organized-crime businesses, such as kidnapping and drug trafficking, are emerging as lucrative activities in the country. Experts say that over the past two years, kidnapping has become more lucrative than drug trafficking.

"We have certainly seen high-profile kidnaps over the last couple of years in India," said Clive Stoddart, managing director of Asset Security Managers, a division of London-based Aon Ltd, a financial-services consultancy that handles insurance-mediation activities. It says India now ranks among the top 10 countries for kidnapping worldwide.

"Our numbers suggest that the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal recorded the highest number of kidnaps for ransom in 2005," said Stoddart. Kidnaps also occur to a lesser, but still frequent, extent in Indian states such as Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.

And, although kidnapping has reduced somewhat in Jammu and Kashmir and Assam over the past year, Asset Security Managers feels that the risk of kidnap in those states still runs high because militants in these states are fighting for independence, and have traditionally used abduction as a way of garnering funds and making political demands.

Over the past 12 months, however, Delhi has become the kidnapping capital of India. The National Crime Records Bureau reveals that more than one-third of all children below the age of 10 kidnapped in the country were abducted in Delhi. With about 102 kidnappings for every million residents, Delhi's abduction rate is even higher than in Colombia, the infamous kidnapping capital of the world, where 83 kidnappings were reported per million people in 2001.

Kidnappers in India have turned entrepreneurial, say police, and operate just like professional kidnappers elsewhere in the world. For instance, most follow the target for days and gather details about the target's strengths and weaknesses such as financial status, daily habits and qualitative information.

"They usually work as a team, with clear-cut roles for each member," said a police official. One who makes the threat calls does not hold the victim as a hostage, and usually the gang that kidnaps does not come forward to receive the ransom. Many gangs work through a network of middlemen who specialize in collecting the ransom and can even wire the money out of the country through illegal fund-transfer channels.

Although increasingly professional criminals are conducting kidnapping these days, "The kind of kidnap that happens in India is still different compared to some of the South American countries," said Stoddart. In South America, gangs kidnap for money, negotiations take place, and the victim is usually released after the ransom is paid. In India, on the contrary, many of the kidnaps involve small amounts of money, as little as $500, but often end in death. Stoddart believes this means "kidnapping is driven more by poverty".

The state Bihar is a good example. Considered the poorest state in India, Bihar, with a population of more than 82 million, had the highest rate of reported kidnappings in the country until 2005. Experts say that an ineffective police force and an effectively bankrupt local government creates a favorable climate for kidnapping for ransom. According to government figures, there were 102 cases in Bihar between December 2005 and February 2006. Between 1992 and 2004, 32,085 incidents were recorded by police.

One reason kidnapping is flourishing, said Kishore Bhatnagar, a just-retired deputy director of the Border Security Force who has spent a few years in the borders of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, is that there are other payoffs besides ransom. "There have been instances when kidnapped victims - teenage children, for example - were sold to brothels because the kidnappers couldn't extract the desired amount of money from the family," he said. "Similarly, kidnapping for selling of body parts - kidneys, mainly - and even adoption are also common."

Nevertheless, with the booming Indian economy and the influx of foreign companies and expatriate professionals, the corporate sector and its employees are the most vulnerable today, say experts. According to Howden Insurance Brokers of the United Kingdom, particularly vulnerable are companies that have employees based or traveling overseas, or have high-profile people handling cash, sensitive information and technology.

In fact, according to the insurance company ICICI Lombard, which has just introduced a kidnap and ransom cover in India, key officers of high-tech companies dealing in information technology, telecommunications and biotechnology, and even some of the teaching staff of Ivy League institutions, are now considered high-risk targets of professional kidnappers by insurance companies.

"Although 'kidnap and ransom' coverage has been in existence for a while, over the last three or four months there has been a sudden spurt of demand for such policies," said Sushant Sarin, head (casualty) of Tata-AIG General Insurance. "Enquiries have started coming from not only multinational corporations operating in Indian but also from Indian companies that send their employees to high-risk countries.

"Indeed, India is fast turning into professional kidnappers' heaven, but many feel that the reasons behind the spurt are not purely economic. According to a former National Security Guards chief, the biggest reason crimes such as kidnapping and robbery are increasing in the country is the lack of an efficient police system.

While the United Nations recommends a ratio of one police officer for 450 residents, India has about 122 police officers for every 100,000 residents: that's about half the UN-recommended ratio. Moreover, according to Ajai Sahni of the Institute for Conflict Management, Indian forensic facilities are woefully ill-equipped.

India has just two forensic laboratories equipped with DNA testing, whereas in the United States, every district has a DNA-testing laboratory that can gather clues and concrete evidence from minute samples such as a single strand of hair or a drop of sweat. "Inadequate infrastructure and training and orientation in the police forces are big reasons behind the increasing incidence of crime in the country," said Sahni.

This is why Control Risks, a UK-based provider of kidnap or extortion incident management services, suggests that prevention may be better than cure. Recent kidnapping incidents "indicate that criminal groups have become more capable and bolder in their targeting and more interested in international companies", it says. "We therefore advise companies to regularly review security around their high-profile management and expatriate personnel in light of the range of possible security risks to their operations."

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Kidnapping by Extremists Stirs India
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: January 3, 1988 LEAD:

The incident started when a group of high-level local officials was traveling in an unarmed convoy through a heavily forested area in southern India. Suddenly a gang of radicals emerged from the woods and took the travelers hostage.

More than two days later, the officials were released unharmed in exchange for eight radicals held by authorities in a nearby prison. The officials had no complaints about their treatment, however. ''We were never unnerved,'' one said.

But the kidnapping, last Sunday, has unnerved much of India and stirred a debate about the wisdom of dealing with extremists. It has also focused attention again on the spread of left-wing radicalism in parts of the country where a virtual war is under way between extremists and the police.

''It is easy enough to condemn the use of such coercive methods,'' said The Times of India, in applauding the peaceful outcome of the kidnapping. But the newspaper said that poor tribal people in the area were so oppressed that they had ''no choice but to organize themselves'' into militant groups carrying out extreme activities. Rebellion Was Crushed In India, such left-wing extremist groups are known as Naxalites, a name taken from the town of Naxalbari in the country's northeast corner, where a peasant rebellion inspired by the teachings of Mao Zedong erupted 20 years ago.

The first Naxalite rebellion was crushed by heavy police force in the state of West Bengal, and hundreds of people were killed. But analysts say the violence did not subside until a Communist government was voted into office in the state and carried out land reform and other steps that satisfied the poor.

Today, groups of Naxalites continue to fight in the northern state of Bihar, where they clash with private armies fielded by big landlords, and in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, where the kidnapping last Sunday was part of a surge in violence in the last year.

Over the last four years, small groups of Naxalites working among tribes in Andhra Pradesh have reportedly killed more than 200 people, including 35 policemen. Most of the policemen have been killed in the last year. 'Liquidate' Terrorists

Ten policemen were killed in one ambush last August, at which time shocked state officials started a major program to ''liquidate'' terrorism.

According to news reports, there are about 5,000 Naxalite followers in Andhra Pradesh, including perhaps 500 hard-core members. Of the dozen groups, the most militant and active is the Peoples' War, which espouses orthodox leftist revolutionary principles.

It was the Peoples' War that carried out the kidnapping of the eight officials last Sunday. Among the victims were five senior civil servants, several of whom had been working closely with underprivileged tribes people in the area.

The officials said later that they were taken into the woods and tied to rocks under a tree. But they were generally treated well, even as they ''exchanged views'' with their captors about Marxist-Leninist philosophy.

The wide disparity between rich and poor in India has led many analysts to wonder why such radical actions have not been more common. Part of the answer may lie in the success of the democratic system, which has made some of the dispossessed feel they have a voice.

Tribes Pushed From Forests In addition, India's rural poor are often seen by experts as especially conservative because of years of living under feudal and caste systems.

But radical action has sprung up in the poorest areas of the country, where feudal landholding patterns and caste burdens have been especially severe. This has been the case in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh states.

In the south the worst-off group has been the aboriginal tribespeople pushed out of the forests and forbidden to cut trees or gather fodder because of Government environmental programs aimed at preserving woodlands.

Spokesmen from these tribal groups charge that the Government has instead turned the forests over to paper-mill owners and other industrial companies. Using Marxist theory, they speak of the need for an outright revolution to break up the powerful ''nexus'' of interests, including the police, industries, Government bureaucrats and politicians.

Police Burn Villages According to newspaper reports, the police have resorted to terror tactics themselves, burning down whole villages in an attempt to root out violence. The police actions are widely seen to have exacerbated the problem.

Both the state government of Andhra Pradesh and the national Government have now come under greater pressure to do something about the Naxalite problem.

But experts say the answer lies less in law enforcement than in an active effort to address the problems of the tribal groups thrown out of their forests and off their lands.

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Ajay Katara arrested over kidnapping charges

Ghaziabad (UP), Oct 3 : Ajay Katara, a key witness in the much publicized Nitish Katara murder case, was arrested by the Ghaziabad Police late on Thursday night on kidnapping charges.

Ajay is accused of trying to kidnap a distant relative of Uttar Pradesh politician DP Yadav, whose son Vikas Yadav has been awarded life sentence in connection with the Nitish Katara murder case.

Vikas's cousin Vishal Yadav has also been sentenced to life in the case.

Vikas and Vishal had allegedly abducted Katara, the son of an IAS officer, from a marriage party in Ghaziabad on the intervening night of February 16-17, 2002. The victim's body was later recovered from a village in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr District.

According to the prosecution, Katara, a business executive, was killed by the two accused as they did not approve of their sister Bharti Yadav's growing proximity with him.

Earlier, the prosecution had produced evidence of Ajay Katara having seen the accused taking Nitish to their car on the fateful night near Hapur Chungi in Ghaziabad.

The accused contended that the chain of events in the case remained incomplete as none of the prosecution witnesses had either supported the abduction or identified the main accused. Ajay Katara's testimony was also challenged on the premise that the police recorded his statement over 20 days after the crime.
ANI

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