A millionaire French businessman was held hostage for two months in Marbella while criminals forced him to empty his bank accounts and convert his fortune into gold bars, Spanish police have revealed.
The kidnappers, described as “hardened criminals” aged between 45 and 57, held the unnamed Frenchman over the summer while they extorted €1.3 million (almost £950,000) of his funds.
They then released him, telling him to continue sending them €100,000 (£73,000) per week on pain of death. “He was terrified,” police said.
The gang – reportedly four or five men - was arrested in raids earlier this month in Marbella, a resort popular with Britons in southern Spain, but the case has just come to public light.
Police only uncovered the kidnapping and extortion after the businessman’s bank signalled "totally atypical" activity, with large sums wired out of his accounts.
The gang released their hostage on July 13, but police waited until September 5 to carry out their arrest.
“Our priority was to identify the whole team,” said a French police spokesman in Toulouse.
During the filmed arrests, officers found 56 gold bars and €90,000 (£66,000) in cash in the Marbella flat, as well as computer equipment “to help commit more hold-ups and kidnappings,” according to a police report.
The gang was already wanted in France for holding up a gun shop in southwestern town of Carmaux on May 19, wounding two officers as they made their getaway.
Three days later, they kidnapped the “rich businessman”, passing by his home to gather his credit card codes and “computer equipment and clothes”, before taking him to Spain.
They held the man in chains for two weeks in the basement of his second home in Platja d’Aro, northeastern Spain, forcing him to ring his family to calmly tell them that “he was perfectly well but was going to take a few days' holiday,” Spanish police said.
They then transferred him to a rental flat in Marbella. The gang had met in prison where they were serving long sentences for armed robbery and murder.
“The one thing they all had in common was having opened fire at least once on a police officer or gendarme,” according to a police report.
Two face charges of attempted murder of a police officer, while a third was on the run after escaping from prison on a life sentence.
As for the businessman, French police said he was “deeply traumatised” by his ordeal.
