A French millionaire was held hostage for two months in Spain while his captors forced him to use his money to buy gold bars.
The businessman, who has not been named, was released in mid-July, but arrests of the criminals came only in early September after the whole team was identified.
The gang, described as “hardened criminals”, demanded that the victim withdraw his funds and purchase gold ingots and bars. They extorted €1.3 million of his funds.
It seems the criminals, aged between 45 and 57, met up in prison in France where they were serving time for armed robbery and murder.
On 19 May some or all of them held up a gun shop in the south-west of France, wounding two police as they fled.
Three days later, they kidnapped the businessman and took credit card codes from his house as well as computer equipment and clothes and headed for Spain where he was kept in chains for two weeks in the basement of his holiday home in Platja d’Arco in the north-east.
He was forced to tell his family that “he was perfectly well but was going to take a few days' holiday,” Spanish police said.
After that they took him to a rented flat in Marbella. After obtaining the fortune, the gang released him with the stipulation that the victim should send them €100,000 every week or he would be killed.
The victim’s bank alerted police when large sums were being whisked out of his accounts in “totally atypical” fashion, but it is not clear when this was done.
When the Spanish police raided the Marbella apartment, they found 56 gold bars and €90,000 in cash along with guns and the computer equipment which was being used to plan “more hold-ups and kidnappings,” a police report said.
French police said the businessman was “deeply traumatised” by his ordeal.
