France indicts seven suspects in Swiss cryptocurrency kidnap

Swiss man kidnapped in France for cryptocurrency: kidnappers indicted Keystone-SDA

Seven people suspected of kidnapping a young Swiss man for a cryptocurrency ransom have been indicted in France.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

This was announced by the public prosecutor’s office in Lyon, five days after the release of the hostage by the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN). The seven suspects have been placed in preventive detention.

The victim, in his 20s, had been kidnapped in a place and under circumstances that were not disclosed. The kidnap ordeal lasted from 28 to 31 August, before being ended by the elite unit of the French gendarmerie near the railway station of Valence, in the department of Drôme.

Last Saturday, the gendarmerie had been informed that a Swiss citizen, who – according to a source close to the case – had cryptocurrencies, had been taken hostage in France by kidnappers who demanded ‘the payment of a ransom in cryptocurrency for his release’, the public prosecutor’s office had indicated.

At the end of a rapid investigation and an operation involving some 150 gendarmes, an initial raid by the GIGN led to the arrest of the main suspect and two other people as well as the release of the hostage. Subsequently, four more people were arrested in a second operation on Sunday.

The seven people, including a 17-year-old minor, were indicted and placed in preventive detention at the end of their appearance yesterday before Lyon magistrates, the prosecutor’s office told AFP news agency today, without specifying the charges.

The suspects have been questioned on charges of kidnapping and extortion in association with a criminal organisation using weapons, the prosecutor’s office had specified.

Kidnappings for the purpose of extortion or attempted kidnappings linked to cryptocurrencies, sometimes spectacularly, have seen an upsurge in recent months in France.

Translated from Italian with DeepL/mga

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail].