THE NETHERLANDS: It is a kidnapping scenario that could easily have been plucked from the pages of fiction.
A hard-working cook, who lives quietly in a middle-class Amsterdam street - but is the daughter of one of the Netherlands' wealthiest men - is snatched by armed kidnappers.
As a police manhunt begins, her father's controversial past is raked over, notably that he supplied banned chemicals to Saddam Hussein's regime.
The plot thickens with revelations in a Dutch newspaper yesterday that the stepmother of kidnap victim Claudia Melchers (37) was found dead after claiming her estranged husband's company also sold chemicals to renegade Arab states.
Hans Melchers, whose daughter was kidnapped on Monday, is in the top 50 Dutch wealthy list, with an estimated fortune of €500 million. He was in his 14th-century castle yesterday, hoping for news of his missing daughter and a possible ransom demand. Police have not commented on a possible link between the kidnapping and Mr Melchers's business dealings.
The family business denied intentionally violating export restrictions by supplying banned chemicals to Iraq in the 1980s.
In March 1999, the divorced industrialist's second wife, Anna Maria Lievens, was found dead in her luxury villa in Malta.
She had notified the Dutch authorities that Mr Melchers was making a fortune producing deadly poison gas chemicals and exporting them to Libya and Syria.
She claimed that after the first discovered shipment to Iraq, for which the company was fined €50,000 in 1986, they continued doing business with Saddam Hussein's regime.
Maltese police found signs of a struggle and there were numerous bruises and wounds on her body. But it was concluded she died from head injuries after accidentally falling downstairs.