Armed assailants on Tuesday attempted to kidnap the daughter and grandson of a prominent French cryptocurrency entrepreneur in Paris. The attack, which took place in broad daylight in French capital’s 11th district, is the latest in a troubling string of violent incidents targeting figures in the country’s growing crypto industry.
The daughter and grandson of a French cryptocurrency entrepreneur narrowly escaped a kidnap attempt by armed men in Paris on Tuesday in the latest attack on a crypto trader in the French capital, police said.
Four masked men attacked a couple and their child in the French capital’s 11th district, police sources told AFP. All three suffered light injuries and were taken to hospital.
According to video footage, three masked men jumped out of a van and tried to force the woman and her child into the vehicle, the sources said. They beat the woman’s partner who tried to intervene.
The woman resisted, grabbing one of the attackers’ handguns and throwing it away, police said, and the screams of the victims eventually attracted passers-by.
The attackers fled in a van which was found close by.
The woman is the daughter of the CEO and co-founder of Paymium, a French cryptocurrency exchange platform.
Tuesday’s events follow the abduction in January of French crypto boss David Balland and his partner.
Balland, co-founder of the Ledger crypto firm, had his finger cut off by the kidnappers.
The kidnappers demanded a “large ransom in cryptocurrency”, prosecutors said, without giving the amount or saying whether it had been paid.
At least nine suspects have since been detained, including the alleged mastermind.
In May, attackers kidnapped a man to force his crypto-millionaire son to pay a ransom. Police arrested seven people after a raid to free the man.
The kidnapping attempt comes as France struggles to control a rise in organised crime. In May last year, gunmen wearing balaclavas freed a jailed drug boss, ambushing his prison van and killing two prison guards in the process. Known as “The Fly”, the prisoner, Mohamed Amra, was arrested and extradited from Romania in February.
Regulators and law enforcement have long warned about crypto’s role in crime. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global body responsible for tackling money laundering and terrorist financing, has warned that crypto assets “risk becoming a safe haven for the financial transactions of criminals and terrorists”.
