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).
Video footage shows three masked men jump out of a white van with branding from the Chronopost delivery company. The woman and her partner fight the attackers and loud screams for help are heard. Speaking to BFMTV, one witness said the assailants tried to “pull a young woman by force” into the waiting vehicle.
The woman can be seen grabbing a gun off one of the masked men and throwing it into the street. The weapon, which was later recovered from the scene, turned out to be a fake, sources told BFMTV.
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, the three men jump back into their van and the fourth suspect – the driver – makes a getaway.
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.”
Once the attack was over, the victims were helped by people on the street. All three of them sustained light injuries and were treated in hospital, BFMTV reported. The woman, who according to the news outlet was five months pregnant, was treated for shock, while her partner’s face was covered in blood.
The woman in the footage is the daughter of the CEO and co-founder of Paymium, a French cryptocurrency exchange platform, according to AFP.
Chronopost said that it did not believe the van involved in the attempted kidnapping was from its company, but rather an attempt to mimic its branding. “Noting the absence of vehicle theft within our company fleet and given the non-compliant markings visible on the images of the vehicle used, everything suggests at this stage that we are dealing with an impersonation of our brand,” the company wrote on X.
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.