Following on from the episode “how to hijack a ship” in Season 1 of this show, in this episode we sit down with Rob Phayre. Rob was a director of a crisis management consultancy based in East Africa during the peak of Somali Piracy. He worked on more than 40 kidnap for ransom cases with the majority being the release of vessels and crew kidnapped by pirates. He spent more than 18 years living in Africa following a military career as a helicopter pilot. Rob currently works for a global energy company, and in his spare time is an author of military thrillers, including “The Ransom Drop“, “Jungle Heist“, and “The Insurgency“.
Listen on Apple Podcasts / Spotify by RSS feed, on Youtube, or right here:
How to Deliver a Ransom – How to get on a Watchlist
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Books and media mentioned during the episode, and suggestions for further research on this topic:
- The Ransom Drop (Rob Phayre)
- Jungle Heist (Rob Phayre)
- The Insurgency (Rob Phayre)
Additional reading suggestions can be found on our 2024 geopolitical reading list.
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The hosts:
Lewis Sage-Passant is a researcher in the field of intelligence and espionage, and a former British Military Intelligence Officer. Lewis holds a PhD from Loughborough University in intelligence studies, and is an adjunct professor in intelligence at Sciences Po Paris. He has extensive experience working and living in the Middle East and Asia Pacific regions in a variety of geopolitical analysis and intelligence roles, supporting the energy industry, the financial sector, leading technology firms, and the pharmaceuticals sector. He has appeared in numerous media outlets, including the BBC, France24, CNBC, Harvard Business Review, The New Arab, El Mundo, GQ, and others, discussing intelligence, geopolitics, and security topics.
Cormac Mc Garry is a Director at the specialist risk management consultancy Control Risks, managing maritime intelligence and security services. Cormac assists clients in the maritime sector with issues such as piracy, war, terrorism, activism and civil unrest but has also works across other sectors, from pharmaceutical to tech, on emerging and global geopolitical risk. Cormac has previously worked as an Operations Manager in East Africa in land-based close protection, crisis response and special investigations. He also worked at the National Maritime College of Ireland, managing applied research projects with the Irish Naval Service and the broader European maritime community and served in the Irish Reserve Defence Forces.
The production team:
Producer: Edwin Tran
Additional credit goes to several unnamed members of the Encyclopedia Geopolitica team, as well as our colleagues in the intelligence and security community who helped to make this podcast possible.
If you liked this episode, don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list and subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. Please also consider supporting our work via Patreon. While the topics we discuss here are often shrouded in secrecy and security classifications, we really hope you’ll tell your friends about us!
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