As for the abduction of Balland and his partner, the investigation looks set to be a long one. The judicial investigation currently covers nine counts.
At the end of police custody, three people were cleared entirely and seven were placed under formal investigation: five were remanded in custody, and the other two were also held behind bars while they prepare their defence before the JLD33. The charges vary widely from person to person but include kidnapping, unlawful confinement or arbitrary detention with torture or acts of barbarity. They face life imprisonment and a one-million-euro fine.
The lawyers contacted declined to comment on the case.
So far they have all insisted they were merely foot soldiers, paid a few thousand euros, and that they do not know who ordered it (whoever that may be), which is consistent with the early evidence. Most say they were paid between €1,500 and €3,000 and recruited on SnapChat, Signal or Telegram.
But to one investigator, it seems “obvious” that an “organised and seasoned” criminal network is behind it, so methodical was the organisation: each member had a single, precise task. For instance, Le Parisien explains that the woman who rented the house was only in charge of the rental and of supplies.34
Still, a sense of proportion is in order.
Sadly, the kidnapping of David Balland is nothing new. In the last century, the abductions of the Peugeot children (of the car-making family), Getty or Lindbergh had already made a deep impression on the public, often in cases of ransom or settling of scores. But there was also the kidnapping of the owner of the Grand Hôtel de Cannes, Jacqueline Veyrac. Or that of the head of the record label Phonogram, Louis Hazan, snatched in the middle of a meeting for a ransom of 15M francs. Or the 300M francs demanded for Luchino Revelli-Beaumont, then head of Fiat in France, abducted outside his flat on rue de la Pompe in Paris by an Argentine far-left group. Or the case of the industrialist Baron Empain, whose finger was sent to the police. And so on.
While it’s true that crypto suffers from unprofessional media coverage, the same goes for most fairly technical fields. Even Le Parisien, usually serious on this kind of story, came out with some howlers about Ledger in its podcast devoted to Balland, claiming for instance that the company had more than a billion in revenue. Coverage like this does lead plenty of people to see the whole thing as something murky and shady, where anything goes. And that suits a large part of the ecosystem, which makes money from get-rich promises, or sells the (very relative) anonymity of blockchains as a solution. In an interview with the business magazine Challenge35, the head of Chainalysis, Jonathan Levin (who, according to my information, took part in tracing the funds), makes the point himself:
Anonymity, Levin says, does not exist: every transaction is recorded permanently on the blockchain, which works like one vast, open-air public ledger.
But just as opinion within the ecosystem isn’t unanimous, neither is that of the media and the general public.
In the same way that a run of plane crashes doesn’t mean flying has become more dangerous, we shouldn’t fixate on crime stories, however violent, real and damaging they may be, to draw conclusions, or worse, to exploit them for our own ends.
These cases represent nothing but themselves. At worst, they reflect a society that is sometimes greedy and violent, from which some drift away to take the easy road.
Out of respect for their privacy, neither David Balland, nor Eric Larchevêque, nor those directly involved in the case were contacted to confirm, inform or comment.
They nonetheless have a right of reply, and above all of correction, should they need it.
My name is Benjamin Charles, and I advise finance, real estate and web3 companies on branding, positioning and content creation.
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EDIT 2 February 2025, 12:20: spelling corrections
EDIT 5 February 2025: names anonymised for people who have never spoken publicly