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0 pointsJumpCrisscross2y ago0 comments

> If someone threatens to kill your employees and burn everything you own to the ground - and you know they will - you're gonna pay them

No, you withdraw from the country. Maybe you bring in a hostage negotiator to exfiltrate your staff. But paying the bribe and then continuing to do business with a foreign terrorist organisation is not grey area stuff.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

xvector2y ago· 3 in thread

> No, you withdraw from the country.

And you watch your employees die? Great, you've saved your business and yourself from legal ramifications, and the people you worked for are dead, and your business is in ashes.

Chiquita did actually end up withdrawing from Columbia shortly after this.

> Maybe you bring in a hostage negotiator to exfiltrate your staff.

This is not how the real world works. If you try this stuff with the AUC in Columbia, they will torture and kill your people for fun, and post it on LiveLeak laughing about it.

JumpCrisscrossOP2y ago

> watch your employees die?

If a gunman comes to your office, what do you do? You defer to competent authority. Same here. Particularly when it comes to scheduled foreign terrorists, there is no (legal) excuse. (Moreover, if the gunman comes to your office every Monday.)

> If you try this stuff with the AUC in Columbia [sp], they will torture and kill your people for fun

If you're operating in Colombia without K&R (or, apparently, basic OpSec), that's on you. Otherwise, I know plenty of people who do good business in Bogotá and Medellín and need not debaucher themselves.

xvector2y ago

> when it comes to scheduled foreign terrorists, there is no (legal) excuse

Okay, how - as a human being - will you reconcile that with the fact that your employees will be tortured to death if you don't pay?

You could stay legally compliant, or you could save your employees' lives. Most moral people would do the latter.

> If you're operating in Colombia without K&R (or, apparently, basic OpSec), that's on you.

Hindsight is 20/20. You are correct, but this statement is fundamentally unhelpful when the AUC is already at your doorstep.

lupire2y ago

The AUC is the local competent authority.

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