How to do you keep executives and employees safe in global hotspots? Chris Voss is a former lead hostage negotiator for the FBI and now CEO of The Black Swan Group. He spoke with CSO's Derek Slater about employee protection and particularly about trends in kidnapping for ransom.
In the event of a continued severe global economic downturn, what effects should companies anticipate in terms of ransom kidnappings and other threats?
The issue of kidnapping and employee security is more of a function of political and law enforcement infrastructure. If the economic downturn diminishes those capacities, it will cause kidnapping to flourish any more in places where it already exists. It won't introduce it into new regions. And economic kidnapping is like a virus; once it gets into a society it's very hard to get it out. Criminals find out it's pretty easy money.
That's what's happening in Haiti, I think. There's not much wealth in Haiti, but kidnapping numbers have to be up to 250 or so Haitian-Americans. If they grab someone who has family in the US, whatever they get - if they get [US]$5k to $25k per kidnapping - that's really serious money in Haiti.
Also: In the past, whether it's true or false, the extractive industries - particularly energy and oil - to try to operate in environments where there's lots of corruption, there were allegations that they were paying off lots of people. Corruption as a form of tax. Under pressure from human rights groups, there's a set of voluntary principles that the extractive industries signed off on, saying that they would contribute to trying to build legitimate law enforce infrastructure instead of paying people off and encouraging corruption.
So in a lot of places [where the law enforcement infrastructure is not well-developed], these companies are just building their own security forces and compounds, to try to find a way to operate ethically. That's what most of them have resorted to. So that's also why an economic downturn will only affect their security if they can no longer afford this protection.
Allegedly, things have changed dramatically for the better in Bogata, Columbia, with violence greatly diminished in recent years. Is that correct, and are there other specific areas of the world where the level of risk has changed significantly in the past couple of years?
Yes, Columbia is much safer than it was ten years ago. amazing difference. When I went in 1998, the guerillas had complete control of the countryside, and you could not travel there safely. In 2005, I went to a going-away function in the countryside with no military escort. We were hardly armed at all. Uribe has done a tremendous job increasing the infrastructure to push out the kidnappers.