Kahramonjon Olimov, a member of the supervisory board and a shareholder of Uzbek Anorbank, was kidnapped in Paris in June, and was released after the ransom was paid, Le Monde writes.
"This incident is of a non—corporate nature and does not relate to the bank's operational activities," the bank said on July 3.
According to the newspaper, on June 21, 48-year-old Olimov flew to Paris from Tashkent via Istanbul. The next day he met a girl in a bar who introduced herself as Anastasia. She is "about 25 years old, (she is) with long black hair, Caucasian appearance," Olim himself described her. The girl said she works in a beauty salon, while she was wearing a Louis Vuitton jacket and a Tiffany bracelet.
On June 23, Anastasia wrote to the banker and persuaded him to have lunch at a restaurant. A few minutes after their meeting, Olimov was grabbed by three men of "athletic build, with a thick beard and a strong Chechen accent," the banker asked his companion to call the police, but she did nothing.
Olimov was brought to a private house with a high fence, where he recognized a certain "thief in law" and the right-hand man of his former partner in the banking business. The "thief in law" said that the banker owed him $ 10 million.
The kidnapped man was beaten for three hours, staged hanging, then transported to the basement of a villa in Nice, where they threatened to cut off his finger, rape, and also recorded a video with him half-naked, forcing him to apologize "for everything he did." After all this, Olimov signed a receipt for a debt of $ 5 million and transferred $ 200 thousand through his driver to Tashkent.
As a result, he was released — he got to Paris and went to the police.The "thief in law" continues to write threats to Olimov on Telegram, although after the banker contacted the police, he began to say that what happened was a "joke." According to Le Monde, on July 1, a Turkish citizen was detained in Nice on suspicion of "kidnapping as part of an organized criminal group." The banker returned to Tashkent and hired security.
In May, The Wall Street Journal reported on a series of kidnappings around the world of owners of cryptocurrency companies in order to obtain ransom in cryptocurrency. At least five cases have occurred in France. For example, one of Ledger's co-founders, David Ballan, was kidnapped in the winter. The attackers sent a video with him, on one of them they cut off his finger. Ledger had to pay part of the ransom (about € 3 million) before the police found the man, RBC reminds.