French Crypto Entrepreneur and Wife Are Freed After Kidnapping

A founder of a French cryptocurrency company and his wife were freed in France this week after being brutally kidnapped and held for ransom, the authorities announced on Thursday.

David Balland, a founder of Ledger, a company that sells physical devices to store crypto assets, was abducted alongside his wife early on Tuesday from their home in Vierzon, a city in central France, according to the Paris prosecutor. The couple were whisked away by car, then separated and detained at different locations, the prosecutor said.

The kidnapping set off a broad investigation involving more than 230 officers who sought to locate the couple. In the end, they freed them without firing a shot, the authorities said at a news conference in Paris on Thursday evening.

“This was an extremely complex case,” said Gen. Ghislain Réty, the head of an elite unit specializing in hostage rescue that freed the couple.

The Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said that the kidnappers had contacted another founder at Ledger and demanded that a large ransom be paid using cryptocurrency. She said investigators were still establishing how much in total they had requested.

The company alerted the gendarmerie, the police force in smaller towns and rural and suburban areas of France. French news outlets that caught wind of the investigation were urged to refrain from publishing any details to avoid jeopardizing the couple’s safety.