• Home
  • Episodes
  • About
    • Awards
  • Contact

Make the most of your money

martin@icfp.co.uk
Informed Choice RadioInformed Choice Radio
  • Home
  • Episodes
  • About
    • Awards
  • Contact
Inside the Ransom Business, with Anja Shortland

Inside the Ransom Business, with Anja Shortland

18/02/2019 Posted by Martin Bamford Interview, Podcast

Inside the Kidnap & Ransom Business, with Anja ShortlandKidnap for ransom is a lucrative but tricky business.

Millions of people live, travel, and work in areas with significant kidnap risks, yet kidnaps of foreign workers, local VIPs, and tourists are surprisingly rare and the vast majority of abductions are peacefully resolved – often for remarkably low ransoms.

In fact, the market for hostages is so well ordered that the crime is insurable. This is a puzzle: ransoming a hostage is the world’s most precarious trade.

What would be the “right” price for your loved one – and can you avoid putting others at risk by paying it?

What prevents criminals from maltreating hostages? How do you (safely) pay a ransom?

And why would kidnappers release a potential future witness after receiving their money?

My guest on the podcast today is Anja Shortland, author of Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business.

Anja is a Reader in Political Economy at King’s College London. She’s worked as an academic economist at Leicester and Brunel Universities, rising to fame for her work on the economics of Somali piracy.

She now studies private governance in the world’s trickiest markets: hostages, fine art, and antiquities – and how people live, trade, and invest in complex and hostile territories.

Her book, Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business, uncovers how a group of insurers at Lloyd’s of London have solved a series of thorny problems for their customers. Based on interviews with industry insiders (from both sides), as well as hostage stakeholders, it uncovers an intricate and powerful private governance system ordering transactions between the legal and the criminal economies.

Here’s my conversation with Anja Shortland, author of Kidnap, in episode 399 of Informed Choice Radio.

Subscribe in Apple Podcasts | Click to listen now | Right click to download episode

Share
0

About Martin Bamford

Your host for Informed Choice Radio is Martin Bamford, an award-winning Chartered Financial Planner and Fellow of the Personal Finance Society. Martin is Director of Client Education at Informed Choice and the author of several personal finance books including The Money Tree, Brilliant Investing and How to Retire 10 Years Early.

You also might be interested in

How to Bring Clarity, Contentment and Certainty to Your Financial Life

How to Bring Clarity, Contentment and Certainty to Your Financial Life

Mar 22, 2021

Do you want to live a fulfilled and purposeful life?[...]

ICR066_ What happens to investments if the UK leaves Europe_

ICR066: What happens to investments if the UK leaves Europe?

Feb 21, 2016

  In this episode of the Informed Choice Podcast, Martin[...]

Claire Walsh
Claire Walsh

ICR150: Claire Walsh, Unbiased

Dec 19, 2016

  My guest for this episode of Informed Choice Radio[...]

Latest episodes

  • How to reduce your energy bills and combat fuel poverty, with James Sommerville
  • Money mindset, with Makala Green
  • Critical Thinking Skills: How to Combat Fake News, with Helen Lee Bouygues
  • Managing an ‘all-weather’ global equity portfolio in 2022, with Matthew Tillett
  • Life Lessons to Help You Find Purpose, Prosperity, and Happiness, with Keisha Blair

Subscribe to Informed Choice Radio

 

Like us on Facebook

Get social with us!

About us

Welcome to Informed Choice Radio, the personal finance podcast all about achieving your financial goals and living a better life.

Find us here

  • Martin Bamford
  • Informed Choice Ltd
  • Sundial House, 20 High Street
  • 01483 274566
  • martin@icfp.co.uk
  • www.icfp.co.uk
  • martinbamford

Fresh from our podcast

  • How to reduce your energy bills and combat fuel poverty, with James Sommerville
  • Money mindset, with Makala Green
  • Critical Thinking Skills: How to Combat Fake News, with Helen Lee Bouygues
  • Managing an ‘all-weather’ global equity portfolio in 2022, with Matthew Tillett
  • Life Lessons to Help You Find Purpose, Prosperity, and Happiness, with Keisha Blair

© 2022 · Informed Choice Ltd. Site by Bear Content

  • Home
  • Contact
Prev Next