The kidnapping rate in the Philippines has risen 48 percent over the last year. If you're a Chinese businessman living and/or working in the Philippines, consider wearing a mask or seeing a plastic surgeon, as you're the favorite target of kidnappers. Kidnappers like snatching Chinese for ransom, because their companies/embassies/families invariably will pay up. Kidnappers realize that if they take a Westerner, they'll have to feed the poor SOB for a couple of months, only then to get stormed by police commandos. In 1995, more than 160 people were abducted in the Philippines-many of them belonging to rich ethnic Chinese families-hauling in more than a US$3.6 million booty for the kidnappers. One syndicate demands 50 million pesos ($1.2 million) and gets it for their victims. That's positive cash flow. Through the first eight weeks of 1997, kidnap gangs had seized 42 victims-most of them ethnic Chinese-making the Philippines the kidnapping capital of Asia. The official kidnap rate in the Philippines is about 13.5 victims per month (most anti-crime groups say the figure is much higher, about 1,000 people are kidnapped every year in the Philippines). There are an estimated 40 different kidnapping syndicates in Manila alone. In 1997, kidnap gangs in the Philippines collected a total ransom of 7.1 million dollars from 249 victims, nearly triple the 2.5 million dollars they earned from 241 victims in 1996.
Kidnapping by the Numbers
Kidnapping has become such a way of life in the Philippines that gangs now accept checks to cover their ransom demands. At least three Filipino-Chinese businessmen were quickly freed by kidnappers after they issued checks ranging from US$11,500 to US$38,000. One anticrime watch official stated that he doubts "if they gave stop payment instructions because the kidnappers would certainly have gotten back to them."
YEAR NO. OF KIDNAPPINGS RANSOMS PAID
1992 123 51
1993 104 28
1994 205 41
1995 199 N/A
1996 241 N/A
1997 370* N/A
Source: Pinkerton (Asia) Limited
* estimated from DP sources
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