The story is worthy of a Hollywood screenplay. It all started Tuesday morning, January 21, in the early morning. David Balland, the co-founder of the start-up Ledger, and his partner were kidnapped from their home, in Méreau south of Vierzon, in the Cher department. He is taken and sequestered in Châteauroux. It is carried out 200 kilometers further north, in Etampes, in several places.
The first alert of their kidnapping was given by Eric Larchevêque, famous co-founder of the company. The same morning, he received a video of a mutilated finger from David Balland and a ransom demand, according to a source close to the case cited by AFP. This is a “large ransom in cryptocurrency” demanded, said the prosecution. In the press, the figure of 10 million euros is mentioned in cryptocurrency. “Part” of this “ransom was paid as part of the negotiation” with the police, but “the majority of the cryptocurrencies were seized and frozen,” however, specified Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau.
Two GIGN interventions
The next day, Wednesday January 22, at 3:30 p.m., a team from GIGN (the intervention group of the national gendarmerie) broke into a building in Vierzon, looking for the kidnappers. That day, the police managed to free David Balland, hospitalized for his mutilated hand. Two suspects were then arrested upon his release, and a third the following night, when he returned to the scene, said a source close to the case. Wednesday evening, his partner was still nowhere to be found.
Leads collected during the first auditions and the use of telephones made it possible to put the investigators on the trail of Etampes, in Essonne, without really knowing what they were going to find there. They finally found David Balland’s wife on Thursday, “tied up in the trunk of a vehicle” in this town south of Paris, explained the prosecutor. Six other suspects are arrested.
Possible sponsor abroad
Thursday evening, ten people were in police custody, suspected of being involved in the kidnapping and sequestration, with acts of torture. On Friday, the investigation was entrusted to the national jurisdiction for the fight against organized crime (Junalco).
These ten suspects, nine men and one woman aged 20 to 40, were notably arrested in Châteauroux (Indre) for three of them and in Etampes (Essonne) for six. Most were known to the courts for common law crimes, but not for links to organized crime, according to Laure Beccuau, who spoke at a press conference in Paris. Asked about the possibility of a sponsor as yet unidentified, or even abroad, Laure Beccuau simply replied that investigations were continuing to “identify all the actors”.
As for the targeted kidnapping of David Balland, his position as co-founder of Ledger, a start-up responsible for the security of cryptocurrencies may have aroused envy. The very successful company is estimated at more than a billion euros.