French prosecutors said on Monday that the police had arrested seven people over the weekend in connection with the kidnapping of the father of a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, adding that the captive had been freed.
In a statement, the Paris prosecutor’s office said it had been informed on Thursday that a man had been kidnapped in Paris and held with “a ransom demand.” The office did not name the kidnapped man.
The captive, who had been held in a home in Essonne, an area to the south of Paris, was freed by the police on Saturday evening, the statement said. It added, without providing further details, that the man was injured and had been taken for medical treatment.
The prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to questions about the nature of the captive’s injuries or about the amount of the demand.
The police arrested four people “in or near the home where the victim was being held captive” during the operation on Saturday and a fifth person who was “driving one of the vehicles likely used by the perpetrators,” the prosecutor’s office said. Two more people were arrested on Sunday, the statement added.
In a social media post, Bruno Retailleau, the French interior minister, wrote, “A huge congratulations to the investigators who did an exceptional job freeing this man and arresting his captors.”
The case was the latest high-profile kidnapping in France connected to cryptocurrency.
In January, the police freed David Balland, a crypto entrepreneur, and his wife, who had been kidnapped and held for ransom for two days.
Mr. Balland is a founder of Ledger, which sells physical devices to store crypto assets. He was hospitalized because the kidnappers had mutilated his hand, Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, said at the time. His wife had been tied up in a car but was otherwise unhurt, Ms. Beccuau added.
A few weeks earlier, a man and his family had been held hostage in France by a group that wanted to blackmail his son, a crypto influencer living in Dubai, French news media reported.
Prosecutors did not immediately respond to questions on Monday asking if there were connections between the kidnapping last week and other abductions linked to cryptocurrency.
Content Source: www.nytimes.com