France is holding six men and a woman following the kidnapping and torture of the cofounder of a global cryptocurrency company and his partner, prosecutors said on Saturday.
The seven, who could face long prison terms up to life, are among 10 people taken into custody late on Thursday as anti-gang investigators probe the case.
David Balland, a 36-year-old cofounder and former employee of Ledger — a world leader in security systems for crypto and digital assets — and his partner were taken from his home in Mereau in the Loire region early on Tuesday, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters on Friday.
Photo: AFP
Another Ledger cofounder, Eric Larcheveque, alerted police to the kidnapping after receiving a video showing a mutilated finger belonging to Balland, and a ransom demand, a source close to the case said.
Police located and freed Balland on Wednesday, and he was taken to a hospital for treatment.
His partner, taken to a different location by the presumed kidnappers, was found tied up in a car.
Most of the suspects were already known to police for past criminal activities, but none had previously been involved in gang-related crime, prosecutors said.
The kidnappers asked for “a large cryptocurrency sum,” Beccuau said, without giving an amount, with part of it handed over during negotiations handled by police before most of the crypto assets were seized and frozen.
The seven — five of whom are aged 20 to 25 — were being held in pretrial detention. They face charges of gang-related kidnapping, acts of torture and armed extortion. Their lawyers have so far declined to comment.
Three others initially held have been released.
A total of 230 police and gendarmes were involved in the operation, including the GIGN elite tactical unit specializing in hostage situations, along with cryptocurrency experts.
Founded in 2014, French company Ledger is a so-called “unicorn” — a privately held start-up worth more than US$1 billion — and a world leader in digital wallets and vaults to safeguard crypto assets.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
RSS