Last week’s so-called ‘tiger kidnapping’ of the director of a security company, whose wife and daughter were held at gunpoint as he was forced to take €1m from his workplace, is a classic example of a simple and lucrative crime.

In a high-tech security age the crime works because it is uncomplicated, requiring only the criminal’s patience and alertness. The victim is forced to circumvent whatever security he has in place in order to get the money to the criminals who have taken his family hostage. By the time the police are alerted, the criminals are long gone and have left few, if any, clues to trace them.

Four years ago last week, the IRA hit the headlines when it pulled off the biggest robbery of its kind on this island, stealing »26.5 million from the Northern Bank in Belfast.

The crime derives its name from the way criminals stalk their victims, quietly building up a dossier on their movements and those of their families.

The nature of the crime could be described as ‘asymmetric criminality’, because it employs simple psychological coercion to combat hi-tech security. However, while the Belfast operation was aimed at the very high end of the market, tiger kidnapping is becoming the crime of choice for Irish criminals with more modest aspirations. Those now at greater risk are smaller, family-run businesses or one-man operations.

The crime has been in existence since the early 1970s.The first occurred in Britain and involved the kidnapping of a Nat West bank manager and his family, who were held hostage overnight. The following morning, the manager was brought to his branch, and the vaults cleared before the staff arrived.

Since then, many instances of tiger kidnapping have occurred throughout the world - with Ireland, Britain and Belgium being the more likely locations for such a crime. There are at least 30 tiger kidnappings a year in Ireland and most are perpetrated against the immediate family of a member of staff while in their own homes.

Security sources indicate crime gangs are feeling the pinch of the recession like everyone else and so find the tiger kidnap away to quickly rob cash-rich targets. As a result, criminals are studying less traditional targets such as bookies, pub owners, shop owners and cash and carry managers. One of the problems facing gardaí is the growing trend of targeting ordinary, but trusted, employees. In the last two years, there have been at least four specific instances of tiger kidnappings which were aimed at a mid-level businessperson or official.

These include an incident last December, when two young children in Gorey managed to free themselves to raise the alarm for their mother, after they had been taken captive by armed men. Earlier this summer in Belfast, a woman and her four-year-old child were held captive for over 12 hours while her husband, a financial institution employee, was forced to clean out the office safe.

Earlier this month, a Raheny-based postmaster had his wife and teenage children held hostage by armed men who burst into the family home before he left for work. This operation netted criminals some €200,000 and required no more effort than to monitor the postmaster and his family for a number of days preceding the robbery. While the gardaí are still following a line of enquiry, no arrests had been made at time of writing.

The Irish Bank Officials Association (IBOA) last year issued a warning to financial institutions about better protecting staff who have access to bank properties. Alarms on their own aren’t enough, but security awareness and planning can be a big help.

The problem is that most mid-level businesses have invested much of their security budgets in high-tech resources. The only way to combat the crime is through avoidance of routine and developing what is termed ‘situational awareness’.

The gardaí can provide advice, but the kind of training needed is usually only available from British companies. However, they may lack the necessary knowledge of threat awareness. Irish companies in a position to provide this type of expertise are those with personnel who have served with military or police specialist units.

While a threat of violence is implicit in the crime, no deaths have resulted from a tiger kidnapping, even though the people kidnapped are often traumatised after the event. Victims’ homes are violated - which is more traumatic than being caught up in a simple robbery lasting only five or ten minutes.

This year, gardaí and the security industry began studying methods where cash could be stored at regional cash centres. This would allow no one person to have complete access, thus making a tiger kidnapping useless. However, there is a real fear in Garda circles that one of these kidnappings will go wrong, resulting in needless loss of life.

Declan Power is an independent security and defence analyst