SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Henry Samuel
The daughter and grandson of a cryptocurrency chief executive have escaped abduction in Paris in a dramatic daylight struggle.
A video, authenticated by a source close to the case, shows a man and a woman walking with their son on Rue Pache in the eastern 11th arrondissement at 8am on Tuesday, Paris time.
A van, apparently bearing a fake Chronopost logo, then draws up and three hooded individuals attempt to force the mother and son into the vehicle. A source said that the man with them intervened and was beaten “with blunt objects”.
The woman grabbed a handgun belonging to the attackers and threw it away. The source said the semi-automatic pistol, which was abandoned, turned out to be an Airsoft gun – a realistic-looking low-power replica.
The victims’ screams eventually attracted passers-by and a resident threw a fire extinguisher at the masked men, who then fled in the vehicle.
The van was found a few hundred metres away on Rue Saint-Maur. The three victims were taken to hospital with minor injuries.
The anti-crime unit of Paris’ judicial police has been called in to investigate.
The brazen attempted kidnapping in Paris.Credit: X
According to initial findings, the woman and her son are the daughter and grandson of Pierre Noizat, the chief executive and co-founder of Paymium, a French cryptocurrency exchange platform founded in 2011 that describes itself as a European pioneer in Bitcoin trading.
Noizat’s fortune is not publicly known, but the graduate of École Polytechnique was an early bitcoin investor and a tireless advocate of the controversial cryptocurrency. His company claims to be “the world’s oldest crypto-to-fiat exchange platform” and was founded in 2011.
It is the latest in a string of kidnap attempts by gangs to extort bitcoin and other tokens from holders in France and elsewhere in Europe.
This month, a 60-year-old Frenchman had a finger chopped off by attackers who demanded his crypto-millionaire son pay a ransom. Le Parisien reported that the attackers had demanded a ransom of up to €7 million ($12 million), which was not paid.
The man, who has not been publicly identified, was abducted in broad daylight as he walked down a street in Paris’s 14th arrondissement. Four men in ski masks forced him into a delivery van.
After being held for more than two days, armed police freed him from a house south of Paris, where five suspects in their 20s were arrested.
In January, David Balland, the co-founder of the crypto company Ledger, which is valued at more than $US1 billion ($1.5 billion), was abducted with his partner at their home in Méreau, near Bourges in central France. He also had a finger cut off.
Police were contacted by Balland’s business partner, who received a video of the finger alongside a demand for a large ransom in cryptocurrency, of about €10 million ($17 million).
Balland was quickly freed in a police raid and his partner was found the following day. Nine suspects are under criminal investigation in that case.
Other abductions of cryptocurrency figures or their partners were reported in Spain and Belgium in recent months.
