Who do you call when someone is kidnapped? Don't call Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal or Jackie Chan. You'll probably end up dead. Don't even call the police, they will jack up the ransom demand and be in cahoots with the kidnappers. You should call your insurance company followed by the embassy, and a professional hostage negotiator. DP advises that anyone in a hostage situation contact a professional in their home country before they contact the local police. Better yet, educate yourself about kidnapping before you find out the hard way.

A typical KRE policy with $1 million limit covers a family of 11 people. In Latin America, business is intertwined with extended family from grandparents down to grandchildren. An annual policy would cost between $7000 in Brazil up to a maximum of $26,000 in Colombia. When you cover a business family, you will always schedule each person. Corporations usually buy blanket policies that cover all employees.

In most countries except Mexico and Colombia unless you work for a large oil company, a $10 million policy for a Fortune 100 company will cost about $350,000 a year. Insurers like Seitlin also can write one shot, one month $1 million KRE policies for travelers and businesspeople for between $2500-$3000. Is it necessary? Well Seitlin believes you'd be crazy to do business south of Miami without $5-$10 million in KRE coverage. In Colombia a ransom less than a million is considered a joke.

Some tips when you are invited to stay overnight.

• Try to avoid countries notorious for kidnapping: Colombia, Mexico, Chechnya, Yemen are just some. Americans doing business for Fortune 100 oil and mining companies in Colombia are at highest risk; low key backpackers and travelers are usually at low risk.
• Strange as it sounds, the odds of extracting you are better in areas where kidnapping is done in conjunction with the police. Brazil and Mexico are just two countries where kidnapping is a business conducted in conjunction with the local police. Areas where kidnapping is intertwined with Maoist or Marxist ideology are much harder.
• If someone you know is kidnapped, do not contact the police and do not talk to the press. Contact your embassy, the insurance company and/or a security consultancy to take the next steps. If you have a KRE policy, someone will be dispatched to act as a counselor within hours.
• Tape record or write down any messages and do not commit to anything until the counselor or security help arrives.
• Most security counselors will be ex-CIA, Mossad or other intelligence service pensioners. The British firms pull from their own pool of ex-SAS, Scotland Yard and MI-5 folks.
• Your security counselor will not make any decisions but he will facilitate the process and act as a coach, a mediator and a go between. They will usually setup a committee that analyze input and demands and then make decisions. Usually the decisions are: Pay the money, stall, or negotiate the ransom downwards. Not the best of jobs for amateurs.
• The fatality rate on security-consultant handled kidnappings is a reassuring 2 percent compared to 9 percent for homemade efforts. Part of the skew is because some kidnap deaths can occur at the attack-the victims may die of illness, heart attack, or they can be killed during rescue attempts.

Seitlin & Company

2001 N.W. 107 Avenue, Suite 200
Miami, Florida 33172
(305) 591-0090, FAX: (305) 593-6993
e-mail: kandrguy@aol.com

Seitlin is the largest insurance broker in Florida that also does a ripping business in kidnap/ransom insurance. Luckily he only has to pay out about once or twice a year. Their clients include mostly wealthy Latin American families, corporations that do business south of the border and employees of multinational corporations. He can provide policies from all the major insurance brokers

 

Chubb Insurance of Canada

http://masc-web.com/chubb/english/epd/kidnap.htm
Chubb offers Kidnap/Ransom/Extortion (KRE) coverage for busy executives with a healthy level of fear. Extortion can also cover computer hackers, contamination or even a computer virus.

 

Lloyds of London

1 Portsoken Street
London England, E1 8DF
(071) 480-4000, FAX: (071) 480-4170
http://www.cyberapp.com/kidnap.html

 

Black Fox International, Inc.

P. O. Box 1187
205 Garvin Boulevard
Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania 19079
(800) 877-2445, (610) 461-6690, FAX: (610) 586-5467
e-mail: jc@black-fox.com e-mail
http://black-fox.com/kidnap.htm

 

Security Resources

Security is big business these days. Americans spend about 90 billion on security every year. We only spend $40 billion on public police. In California there are four times as many private police as there are government police. In countries like Russia and South Africa people don't even bother calling for the police. Areas affected by kidnapping also have a number of local firms that provide security and protection. Inquire at your local embassy or with other multinational companies.

 

Pinkerton Risk Assessment Services

1600 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 901
Arlington, Virginia 22209
(703) 525-6111, FAX: (703) 525-2454
www.pinkertons.com
fjohns@pinkertons.com

Once on the trail of bank robbers in the Wild West, Pinkerton has gone global and high-tech. Today, you can get risk assessments of over 200 countries on-line or in person. Pinkerton offers access to a database of more than 55,000 terrorist actions and daily updated reports on security threats. For the nonactive, you can order printed publications that range from daily risk assessment briefings to a monthly newsletter. Their services are not cheap, but how much is your life worth? Annual subscriptions to the on-line service start at about US$7000, and you can order various risk and advisory reports that run from US$200-$700 each. Pinkerton gets down and dirty with its counterterrorism programs, hostage negotiators, crisis management and travel security seminars.

The service is designed for companies who send their employees overseas or need to know what is going on in the terrorist world. Some reports are mildly macabre, with their annual businesslike graphs charting maimings, killings, assaults and assassinations. Others are truly enlightening. In any case, Pinkerton does an excellent job of bringing together the world's most unpleasant information and providing it to you in concise, intelligent packages.

Unlimited on-line access to their database on 230 countries will run you US$6000 a year. You will find the information spotty, with a preponderance of information on South and Central America. Many of the write-ups on everything from Kurds to the Islamic Jihad are written by young college students with little in-country experience. On the other hand, there are many holes that are filled by CIA country profiles (available at any library for free).

If you want to save a few bucks, for US$4000 a year (US$5000 overseas), you can get a full subscription of daily, weekly, quarterly and annual risk assessments, as well as analysts' commentaries, a world status map and a fax service that keeps you abreast of fast breaking events.

Cheapskates can opt for the US$2250 standard package, which eliminates the daily reports sent via fax, but provides you most of the other elements. If you want to order | la carte, expect services that range from a US$30 personalized trip package, to US$250 printouts of existing risk and travel advisories, to accessing the company's Country Data bank for US$1000 per country.

 

Control Risks Group, London

8200 Greensboro Drive, Suite 1010
McLean, Virginia 22102
(703) 893-0083, FAX: (703) 893-8611
83 Victoria Street
London, England SW1H-OHW
[44] (171) 222-1552

This international management consulting company specializes in political, business and security risk analysis and assessments, due diligence and fraud investigations, preventative security and asset protection, crisis management planning and training, crisis response and unique problem solving. With extensive experience in kidnapping, extortion and illegal detention resolution, they have handled more than 700 cases in 79 countries. Control Risks has 14 offices around the world including Washington, D.C., London, New York, Bogota, Mexico City, Bonn, Amsterdam, Manila, Melbourne, Moscow, Paris, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. Their international, political and security risk analysis research department is the largest of its kind in the private sector and has provided hundreds of companies with customized analyses of the political and security risks they may face doing business around the globe. An on-line Travel Security Guide addresses security issues in more than 100 countries.

Emergency Numbers for CRG:

LONDON: (071) 222 1552 or (071) 481 1851 (Nightline)
UNITED STATES: (703) 893 0083
AUSTRALIA: (613) 416 1533

 

Kroll Associates

900 Third Avenue, 7th Floor,
New York, New York 10022
800) 824-7502
(212) 833-3206, FAX: (212) 750-8112
www.krollassociates.com

A security/investigative firm founded in 1972 by Jules Kroll and owned by Equifax (the credit info folks). In addition to gumshoeing on an international and corporate level, Kroll also offers a very useful service for business travelers. You can use your credit card to order a Travel Watch report for $9.95 each. They also provide customer security services for business. Kroll has information over 300 cities worldwide that covers transportation to and from the city, emergency telephone numbers as well as health and safety concerns. They also have special reports on countries an regions. There are also new security tips on the Internet and computers, the airlines and in depth country reports available.

 

Ackerman Group

166 Kennedy Causeway, Suite 700
Miami Beach, Florida 33141
(305) 865-0072

Mike Ackerman specializes in crisis resolution or hostage return through providing the financial and security resources required to resolve hostage situations safely.

 

TroubleShooters

USA: (352) 343-2406, FAX: (352) 343-3864, Canada: (403) 885-5273

Ex-US military folks who freelance for hostage situations and can provide aviation services for overseas extractions. They can provide assistance for executive protection, hostage retrieval and missing person searches.