Fear and anger in France's crypto community after spate of kidnappings
PARIS, May 16 (Reuters) - After watching frightening images of a prominent French crypto boss' daughter being attacked on a Paris street during a botched kidnapping, crypto executive Alexandre Aimonino draws reassurance from changes he has made to his daily routine.
To stay safe, the 23-year-old co-founder of a crypto compliance software company avoids public transport, skips industry get-togethers and varies his drive home.
"Working in the ecosystem feels like having a target on your back," Aimonino told Reuters.
French crypto bosses have reacted with fear and anger after a series of violent kidnappings. While some have stepped up security and are considering bodyguards, others are calling for a tougher crackdown on crime plus deregulation to keep the crypto paper trail more anonymous.
In the latest incident on Tuesday, a masked gang tried to abduct the daughter of Pierre Noizat, the CEO of the French crypto firm Paymium. The incident, in broad daylight, went viral after it was filmed by onlookers.
It was at least the third such attack in recent months.
In January, the co-founder of French crypto company Ledger and his wife were kidnapped in central France, while in May the father of a head of a crypto company was snatched in Paris. Although all were rescued, both of the men lost a finger.
A ransom in cryptocurrency was paid during the kidnapping of the Ledger co-founder, but quickly recouped by French investigators.
Details are murky about the gangs behind the attacks, though authorities have said 10 people were questioned after the Ledger attack and seven people were arrested following the first kidnapping in May, with two released for having no connection.
The Paris prosecutors' office said the organised crime unit of Paris police was investigating Wednesday's attack. The prosecutors did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters.
Though a small part of global financial markets, the rapid rise in the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in recent years has created a new group of wealthy investors.
Security experts interviewed by Reuters said that criminals could be tempted by investors posting evidence of new-found wealth online, as well as the perception that crypto is easier to launder than traditional cash.
"Crypto transactions are more likely to escape the level of scrutiny applied to traditional banking systems," said Michael Lyons, a lawyer specialising in anti-money laundering at Clifford Chance.
Cryptocurrency has long been demanded as ransom payments in hacks and cyberattacks, and regulators around the world are trying to crack down on crypto's use by criminals.
For some, the attacks are a symptom of France's growing violent crime problem.
"The heart of the matter is ... whether we know how to repress crime in this country," Noizat said on BFM TV on Friday.
Eric Larcheveque, a Ledger co-founder, said crime may be fuelling an exodus.
"How many entrepreneurs, how many talented individuals, are seriously considering leaving a country that no longer protects its people?" he wrote on X. "How many have already left, silently, out of weariness, fear, or resignation?"
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau met with French crypto players on Friday to calm their nerves and outline measures to protect them and their families.
Noizat's company, Paymium, suggested deregulation could provide founders with more security.
In a statement posted on X on Wednesday, Paymium criticized European regulations like the international "travel rule" - already in place in traditional financial institutions - which requires data to be collected about the source and recipient of crypto transfers.
Some crypto bosses are taking measures into their own hands.
Thomas Rossi, who runs Wagram, a bodyguard company in Paris, said he had many new requests after Tuesday's attack. His firm also provides security for visiting U.S. crypto executives.
Sofiane Aboubeker, CEO of French security company ARECIA, also said he had seen an increase in requests for close protection.
Ben Davis, who runs an insurance brokerage in the UK for crypto clients, said that while France was facing a particular wave of attacks, there had also previously been incidents in the U.S., elsewhere in Europe, and around Asia.
"Two years ago kidnap and ransom wasn't really a big problem, no one really wanted to talk about it, and now 100% of our clients are talking about it," he said.
Davis, who is also a crypto investor, said he has taken steps to increase his own security, but did not want to give details: "These attacks are again becoming more gruesome, more brazen, and are increasing in likelihood and severity."
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These included The Fourth Protocol (1984), which had a cameo role for the British spy-in-exile Kim Philby and was also successfully filmed, with a screenplay by Forsyth and starring Michael Caine and a pre-Bond Pierce Brosnan and, against type, The Phantom of Manhattan (1999), a sequel to Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. Nothing, however, was to match the impact of The Day of the Jackal and when a Guardian journalist spotted a copy in a London flat used by the world's most wanted terrorist, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, or 'Carlos', in 1975, the British press dubbed him Carlos the Jackal, with no need to explain the reference. Born in Ashford, Kent, Frederick was the son of Phyllis and Frederick Sr, shopkeepers at 4 North Street – his mother's dress business operated on the ground floor and his father sold furs on the first floor. He was educated at Tonbridge school, where supportive teachers and summer holidays abroad ensured that Frederick excelled at French, German and Russian. 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He was recalled to London for an official BBC reprimand but returned to Nigeria as a freelance at his own expense to cover the increasingly bloody war and to write a Penguin special, The Biafra Story (1969). He returned to Britain for Christmas 1969, low on funds, his BBC career in tatters and with nowhere to live. On 2 January 1970, camped out in the flat of a friend, he began to write a novel on a battered portable typewriter. After 35 days The Day of the Jackal was finished, and fame and fortune followed. In 1973 he married Carrie (Carole) Cunningham, and they moved to Spain to avoid the rates of income tax likely to be introduced by an incoming Labour government. In 1974 they relocated to County Wicklow in Ireland, where writers and artists were treated gently when it came to tax, returning to Britain in 1980 once Margaret Thatcher was firmly established in Downing Street. By 1990, Forsyth had undergone an amicable divorce from Carrie, but a far less amicable separation from his investment broker and his life savings, and claimed to have lost more than £2m in a share fraud. To recoup his losses, Forsyth threw himself into writing fiction, producing another string of bestsellers, although none had the impact of his first three novels. He was appointed CBE in 1997 and received the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 2012. In 2016 he announced that he would write no more thrillers and that his memoir The Outsider (2015), which revealed that he had worked as an unpaid courier for MI6, or 'The Firm' as he called it, would be his swansong. He acquired a reputation as a rather pungent pundit, both on Radio 4 and in a column in the Daily Express, when it came to such topics as the 'offensive' European Union, the leadership of the Conservative party, the state of Britain's prisons and jihadist volunteers returning from Middle Eastern conflicts. He was an active campaigner on behalf of Sgt Alexander Blackman, 'Marine A', who was jailed for the murder of an injured Taliban fighter in Afghanistan in 2011. Forsyth maintained that Blackman had been made a scapegoat by the army from the moment of his court martial. In 2017 the conviction was overturned. Often concerned with military charities, Forsyth wrote the lyrics to Fallen Soldier, a lament for military casualties in all wars recorded and released in 2016. Forsyth was not the first foreign correspondent to take up thriller-writing. Ian Fleming had led the way in the 1950s, with Alan Williams and Derek Lambert carrying the torch into the 1960s. The spectacular success of The Day of the Jackal did however encourage a new generation, among them the ITN reporter Gerald Seymour, whose debut novel, Harry's Game, was generously reviewed by Forsyth in the Sunday Express in 1975. Years later, Seymour remembered the impact of Forsyth's debut, The Day of the Jackal: 'That really hit the news rooms. There was a feeling that it should be part of a journalist's knapsack to have a thriller.' Despite having declared Forsyth's retirement from fiction, his publisher Bantam announced the appearance of an 18th novel, The Fox, in 2018. Based on real-life cases of young British hackers, The Fox centres on an 18-year-old schoolboy with Asperger syndrome and the ability to access the computers of government security and defence systems. For Christmas 1973 Disney based the short film The Shepherd, a ghostly evocation of second world war airfields, on a 1975 short story by Forsyth. The following year The Day of the Jackal was reimagined by Ronan Bennett for a TV series with Eddie Redmayne taking the place of Fox. Later this year a sequel to The Odessa File, Revenge of Odessa, written with Tony Kent, is due to appear. Forsyth will be a subject of the BBC TV documentary series In My Own Words. In 1994 he married Sandy Molloy. She died last year. He is survived by his two sons, Stuart and Shane, from his first marriage. Frederick Forsyth, journalist and thriller writer, born 25 August 1938; died 9 June 2025
