Daughter of crypto boss escapes Paris kidnap in latest in series of attacks
Armed assailants tried to kidnap the daughter and grandson of a French cryptocurrency boss in Paris, police said, in a brazen daytime attack that was caught on camera.
Tuesday morning's attack in Paris's 11th district is the latest in a string of violent incidents targeting figures in France's burgeoning crypto industry.
Four masked men attacked the daughter, her partner and their child in the French capital, police sources told French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP). All three sustained light injuries and were treated in hospital, the news agency reported.
Video footage shows three masked men jump out of a white van. The woman and her partner fight the attackers and loud screams for help are heard.
The woman can be seen grabbing a gun off one of the masked men and throwing it into the street.
The screams attract the attention of passersby, who intervene, one of them armed with a fire extinguisher.
'I saw passersby saying to stop. A man went out into the street with a fire extinguisher to try to make these people leave,' a witness told French broadcaster BFMTV.
Eventually the assailants give up, jump back into their van and drive away.
Another woman who witnessed the scene told BFMTV, 'I went out into the street and saw this man lying on the ground with a pistol next to him, quite bloody.'
The woman in the footage is the daughter of the CEO and co-founder of Paymium, a French cryptocurrency exchange platform, according to AFP.
The Paris prosecutor's office told CNN that it has opened an investigation into offenses of attempted arrest, abduction, kidnapping or arbitrary detention committed by an organized gang, aggravated violence and participation in a criminal association.
The attack on Tuesday follows the abductions of other cryptocurrency figures in France.
In January, David Balland, a co-founder of French crypto firm Ledger, had his hand mutilated after he and his wife were kidnapped from their home in central France. They were freed after a police operation. Part of the ransom demanded by the kidnappers was paid, Reuters reported.
France's Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, announced Wednesday he would hold a meeting with cryptocurrency entrepreneurs to discuss security in light of the spate of attacks, according to AFP.
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