Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business Audiobook (Free)

Kidnap for ransom is a lucrative but tricky business. Millions of people live, travel, and function in areas with significant kidnap risks, yet kidnaps of foreign workers, local VIPs, and tourists are surprisingly rare and almost all abductions are peacefully resolved-often for remarkably low ransoms. In fact, the market for hostages is indeed well ordered how the crime is usually insurable. This is a puzzle: ransoming a hostage is the world’s most precarious trade. What will be the ‘correct’ price for your loved one-and can you avoid putting others at risk by spending it? What prevents thieves from maltreating hostages? How will you (securely) pay a ransom? And just why would kidnappers to push out a potential future witness after getting their money?

Kidnap: In the Ransom Business uncovers what sort of group of insurers in Lloyd’s of London have solved these thorny problems for their clients. Predicated on interviews with market insiders (from both sides), aswell as hostage stakeholders, it uncovers an intricate and powerful personal governance system purchasing transactions between the legal and the criminal economies.