Kidnappings South of the Border Often Kept Quiet

As of Tuesday, three days after Sanyo executive Mamoru Konno was abducted by armed kidnappers at a park outside Tijuana, his Japanese employer still had not filed a formal report with Mexican authorities, highlighting how Latin American kidnapping victims’ families and employers often deal directly with the perpetrators.

Konno was still missing, so why not inform the police? Families and corporations fear that involving them in ransom negotiations can introduce greater risk of violent intervention, jeopardizing the lives of the victims they are trying to save. An unusually high percentage of police interventions in Latin American kidnappings result in the death of the hostage, studies show.

“You have inexperienced police who see red and want to win. . . . There is pride at stake and a danger that the will to put an end to the situation will go to their head,” said Sandy Markwick, a senior analyst in the Washington, D.C., office of Control Risks, a security consulting firm that advises insurers of kidnapping ransom policies.

Another disincentive is that rogue police have been implicated in prior kidnappings in Baja California and elsewhere in Latin America. On July 24, a 31-year-old scion of a prominent Mexicali family, Eugenio Vildosela Mayne, was murdered in a botched kidnapping by a gang that included two Baja California state police, the Baja state attorney general’s office said.

The two Baja state policemen, one of whom is now in custody in connection with the crime, were assigned to the car theft detail and were using police radios to avoid detection, authorities said. Vildosela Mayne was killed when one of the kidnappers’ guns discharged shortly after he was seized, the authorities said.

“Unfortunately in a number of countries, corrupt police officials are in league with the kidnappers,” Brian Jenkins, a director of Kroll Associates of Los Angeles, an international security consulting firm, said Tuesday. “The local police may be incompetent, corrupt or both.”

Jose Luis Perez Canchola, the Tijuana-based vice president of the Mexican Academy of Human Rights, has called for a government investigation into the allegations of Mexican police involvement in the latest wave of kidnappings.

“I think the kidnapping bands are advised by or involve members of the Mexican police,” Perez Canchola contended. “They are losing control over active duty and retired police. Kidnappings have grown tremendously as an organized crime, and very few cases have been solved.”

Not reporting kidnappings involves risks too: The longer the crime goes unsolved or the victim unransomed, the colder the trail to the perpetrators becomes. Moreover, the police have greater resources with which to track kidnappers than private citizens, consultants say.

But most families and companies of victims in Latin America, and many other parts of the world, comply with the threats of kidnappers to keep the situations quiet.

Two girls, employees of Sanyo, who were briefly abducted with Konno, did file a report Saturday with Tijuana municipal police, an officer confirmed Tuesday, but no complaint has been made by Sanyo to Baja state authorities, who would handle such an investigation.

“The first thing kidnappers tell families all around the world is, don’t tell the police,” said Baja California Judicial Police Cmdr. Antonio Torres Miranda, whose office would lead a local investigation if Sanyo or Konno’s family filed a formal kidnapping report. “It’s the families who suffer,” Torres Miranda said in an interview Tuesday.

As for the 56-year-old Konno, Sanyo officials said Tuesday that there was nothing new in the company’s bid to free its 30-year employee, one of the most popular in Sanyo’s managerial ranks in Tijuana.

Konno had attended a company baseball game Saturday and was leaving in his car about 6 p.m. when the gang, numbering at least four gunmen, abducted him.

The kidnappers allowed Konno to place a call a few hours later Saturday to another Sanyo employee to inform her of the kidnapping and set the ransom demand at $2 million. Sanyo declined Tuesday to comment on whether it has communicated with Konno’s captors since then. But it has said it was prepared to “do whatever it takes” to secure Konno’s release.

Japanese news media reported that Konno’s wife and family, who live in Japan, were headed to San Diego, but Sanyo declined comment on that and other aspects of the incident.

“President Konno’s well-being and expeditious return is Sanyo’s first priority. For this reason we would like to decline further comment at this point,” said a Sanyo spokeswoman.

Several Japanese executives have been kidnapped and murdered in Latin America in recent years. Takashi Ota was working in Panama for Citizen Latinamerica Corp., an affiliate of Tokyo-based Citizen Watch Co., when he was killed in 1992. A servant helped mastermind the plot.

Also in 1992, a Mazda Motor Corp. vice president was slain in Colombia three months after the Toshiba Corp. paid a ransom, reportedly $2 million, for two Japanese engineers kidnapped there.

Several Japanese executives have been kidnapped in Mexico City over the past 10 years but the cases were never made public because the employees were successfully ransomed, one Japanese business consultant said.

Baja Judicial Police Cmdr. Torres Miranda said there have been at least five kidnappings in Tijuana since November, all Mexicans except for an American businessman, but he would not discuss details. Vildosela Mayne, the Mexicali kidnapping victim who was killed last month, owned a truck rental firm.

Estimates of annual kidnappings in Mexico “run around 1,000,” said Jenkins of Kroll Associates. Ransom demands range from a few thousands dollars to tens of millions. A ransom of $30 million was paid for Alfredo Harp Helu, a wealthy Mexican banker kidnapped in 1994. “This had an inspirational effect as ransom demands increased in subsequent episodes,” Jenkins said.