The founder of a French cryptocurrency company and his wife were released in France this week after being brutally abducted and held for ransom, authorities said on Thursday.
David Baland, founder of Ledger, a company that sells crypto assets storage, was abducted with his wife early on Tuesday from their home in Vierson, a city in Central France, according to the Parisian prosecutor. The couple was taken by car and then divided and detained in different places, the prosecutor said.
The abduction launched a broad investigation involving more than 230 employees who tried to find the couple. In the end, they released them without a single shot, authorities at a press conference in Paris said on Thursday night.
“It was an extremely complicated case,” said General Gislen Retty, the head of an elite part specializing in the rescue of hostages, who released the couple.
Paris Prosecutor Lor Bekuo said the abductors had contacted another founder of Ledger and asked for a large ransom with the help of cryptocurrency. She said investigators still determine how much they wanted.
The company warned the gendarmerie, the police in smaller cities and rural and suburban areas of France. The French news editions they learned about the investigation were called to refrain from posting any details so as not to endanger the couple’s safety.
The gendarmes quickly found Mr. Baland in Shatoru, about 30 miles southwest of his home, and released him on Wednesday. He was hospitalized for “mutilation” applied by the abductors of his hand, said Mrs. Bekuo.
An employee familiar with the investigation who is not authorized to speak publicly about a current case, said the abductors sent an image of Mr. Baland’s mutilated finger to put pressure on the company.
Part of the ransom was paid during negotiations with the abductors, said Ms. Bekuau. “Almost all this cryptocurrency was traced, frozen and seized,” she said.
On Thursday, using monitoring of some suspects, analyzing telephone records and questioning several people who have already been arrested, investigators found Mr. Balland’s wife in étampes, about 80 miles north of Vierzon.
The police found her in a car, but otherwise unharmed, said Mrs. Bekuo.
A total of nine men and one woman between the ages of 20 to 40 were detained for interrogation, Mrs. Bekuau said. She did not identify them and did not give details of their participation, saying only that they were from different cities and had criminal records. They were not known to the police as part of organized crime, she said.
Pascal Gauthier, Ledger’s CEO, wrote on social media on Thursday that he was “deeply relieved”.
“Our main priority has always been to allow law enforcement authorities to do their job and protect the integrity of the investigation,” said Mr. Gauthier. “We have respected the requests of the law enforcement agencies regarding the preservation of critical details of the current investigation and evaluated the members of the press who did the same.”
Ledger, a well -known startup, estimated at more than $ 1 billion, was founded in 2014 and has since sold over six million units, according to the company’s website. The company has over 700 employees in Europe, Asia and the United States.
Éric Larchevêque, another founder of the company and a well-known television personality that appeared on the jury of the French equivalent of Shark Tank, expressed “great relief and deep joy” on social media after the release of Mr Baland and his wife.
Prosecutors are launching an investigation into the abduction and detention of someone against his or her will as part of an organized gang to get something in return; Torture acts; and armed blackmail. These crimes can bear life imprisonment, said Mrs. Bekuau.
The case repeated a similar one reported by the French media this month, in which a man and his family were kept hostage by a group who wanted to blackmail his son, a cryptocurrency influencer living in Dubai. They were released, but there were no arrested in this case, according to news reports.
At this stage, investigators have not established a link between the two cases, said Ms. Bekuau.