The Kidnapping Business
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is kidnapping really that lucrative, and why are some countries, such as Mexico, plagued by the crime?
Ed Butler speaks to one kidnap victim from Mexico City, as well as Ioane Grillo, a journalist based there who has spent years studying the phenomenon. Kidnapping consultant Carlos Seoane explains what to do if you receive that dreaded phone call announcing that a loved one has been taken hostage. And Anja Shortland of Kings College London talks us through the logic behind kidnap insurance.
(Picture: A woman sits on a dirt road near Tijuana in Mexico after crashing her car while fleeing from would-be kidnappers; Credit: The Washington Post/ contributor/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:08.4 | I'm Ed Butler, and today on Business Daily, we're going to be looking at the shady and terrifying world of kidnap and ransom. |
| 0:16.4 | Are the bad guys willing to go to jail 40, 50 years for 3,000 bucks? The answer is yes. |
| 0:24.9 | If you're insured for kidnapped for Ansem, a point of the model is that they pay so little |
| 0:31.8 | that at the margin you might as well drive a taxi rather than kidnap somebody. |
| 0:36.8 | I would love to see in Mexico a government, say from the very top, you know, we will not allow |
| 0:43.4 | this to continue. That's all coming up here on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:50.3 | Just imagine it's you. You're at home or at work, going about your ordinary business, |
| 0:56.0 | and you get a call. |
| 0:57.5 | A loved one has been taken. |
| 1:00.0 | Suddenly these two guys appeared with guns, pointed to my head. |
| 1:05.9 | They forced me to go to the back seat, to the car, and face down. |
| 1:11.9 | I realized we were being kidnapped, |
| 1:15.1 | and that was the moment where I really got scared |
| 1:18.5 | and understood the horror we were facing. |
| 1:21.9 | The words there of Aaron, |
| 1:23.6 | a Mexican citizen some years ago he was seized in Mexico City, |
| 1:27.1 | an experience that he |
| 1:28.2 | describes now as the most terrifying he has ever had. |
| 1:32.3 | A nightmare of nine days started from there, where I really didn't know if I was going to be |
| 1:38.6 | alive after that. |
| 1:40.3 | I faced the death and understood that my possibilities to be alive were very very little. |
... |
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