faena hotel - beunos aires 14-12-2019

On the 14th December 2019 wealthy British businessman, Matthew Gibbard was shot dead and his stepson injured whilst being held up by armed robbers on mopeds, as they got out of a taxi at the Faena hotel in Beunos Aires, Argentina.

Reporting suggests that they were targeted at the airport, then followed to their hotel by 2 males on a motorcycle who were supported by another vehicle.

This is a tragic incident, made even more so by the fact that it was preventable and the warning signs will have been apparent should someone have been looking for them.

In this article lets’s explore some of the areas which may have led to the travellers being vulnerable to targeting and exploit in order to prevent the same thing happening to you.

We will compare the various solutions and their benefits at the end of this article.

Pre-Trip

Before you travel, it is crucial to understand your destination, this will allow you to make an informed decision on how safe your destination is. 

You can easily do this yourself or you could engage a security company to do it on your behalf. BluSkills offer this service for our clients, there are also other companies who have paid services and the US department for state travel app (Smart Traveller) is an excellent free alternative.

On the surface Argentina is a beautiful country, great restaurants and bars, great shops and beautiful beaches. However when we look at Argentina we can see from its economic profile that it has historically suffered from significant wealth disparity. From this we could accurately presume, high levels of street and organised crime driven by poverty and lifestyle complications around this.

Looking at the FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s) guidance for UK citizens travelling, we can see a number of very detailed issues for travellers, Street crime, targeting of tourists in public areas such as hotel lobbies, bus stations, advice surrounding techniques and use of motorbikes using 2 riders through to robbery using violence and weapons in the street. The Smart Traveller app warns us about scams involving yellow and black cabs at the airports too.

Unfortunately, this is all sounding too familiar in relation to our incident.

Plan your trip

With the research now conducted, you have a much better feel for where you are going. You have identified a number of areas where we might be vulnerable and at what times of the day.

We can now start to mitigate these vulnerabilities through planning. There may be financial constraints to most people, however this may in part offset the risk of being targeted. In this case this appears to have not been pursued.

From the research we are concerned with the following:

• Arrivals and targeting at the Airport

• Safe travel to the hotel

• Check-in at the hotel

• Dangerous areas around the hotel

In any country we should always be wary at our point of entry. It is a choke point and a great place for us to be targeted. People of high wealth and means are generally funnelled through the same system as locals and everyday travellers. They are also easily distinguishable by their clothing, jewellery, travel cases and behaviour.

At this point in our travel, we have not established a “baseline” for the country. What we mean by this is that we cannot and have not yet established what normal and safe looks like. As we make our way through customs to baggage reclaim, in to the arrivals hall, we believe we are safe and we are also preoccupied, failing to take in those around us. 

This is where we are vulnerable and where we are likely to be targeted. Corrupt airport employees, porters, cleaners or those professional criminals lurking in the arrivals hall can easily pick up on foreigners who are vulnerable to exploit. They can guide us to where they want us, help us with our bags to a corrupt taxi, take us to a vulnerable spot en-route to our hotel or have us followed for later targeting at our place of stay.

Again, if we look at our guidance we can see it is recommended to travel without jewellery in order to avoid targeting at the airport. We would suggest lowering the profile of your luggage too, and also to be aware of cabs and book your ground travel in advance. 

Our planning therefore starts with low profile entry to the country where we meet our pre-arranged travel means which needs to be reputable. Hotels can help with this or you may wish to go through a security company who will have points of contact or can arrange a security conscious solution for your destination of choice. 

In our example, the security option would have had the ability to have detect the surveillance from the airport and taken the appropriate action once detected. They also have the established baseline at a time when you don’t.

We should also look at the location of our hotel. In this case there is detailed information available including neighbourhoods in Beunos Aires to avoid. San Telmo is noted and is close at around 1KM, from the hotel. While this is not something to stop you booking the hotel is is important to know that you may be very vulnerable if walking around this area and may be targeted from your hotel.

This planning would have given the travellers the best chance of getting safely from the Airport to their hotel, allowing them to establish the normal pattern of life. 

While we cannot determine from the articles exactly how the victims were dressed to travel and whether they had lowered their profile, it is clear they took a yellow cab and is believed the father was wearing an expensive watch. It appears this gang targeted travellers from the US and Europe, holding up fake welcome signs to observe arrivals more naturally, whilst having the support elements to conduct follows from the airport.

Valuables are worth less than your life

While becoming the victim of crime and letting someone get away with taking your possessions may not sit comfortably with you at all, it is preferable to the loss suffered in this incident.

All the warning signs had been missed and the two men found themselves involved in the robbery. The criminals in this incident most likely wanted to take the valuables, escape and cash them in; the “target selection”, “plan”, “execute” and “exploit” process.

The best way to have diffused the incident would have been to have given them what they wanted quickly and with the least fuss possible, and in fact this is also the guidance given by the FCO in their advice pages.

When involved in an incident we will behave in a number of ways, often instinctively, we will freeze, flight or fight. In this case it was fight. It is impossible to say if the FCO’s advice may have changed this reaction to the incident, however it is easier to suggest that by researching the location, planning the trip and taking the advice given, this incident may more certainly have not befallen this family.

Below we have compared a number of travel and security options for comparison.

We would like to thank our friends at EMS Risk Management and the Faena hotel for their help in supplying estimates and information on the current situation in Beunos Aires.

If you’re planning a trip overseas and would like to, know more about your destination, have a risk assessment conducted or arrange secure transportation and security for your trip get in touch with us today.