48-year-old financier from Uzbekistan Kahramonjon Olimov, the sole shareholder of Anorbank, was kidnapped in the center of Paris, Le Monde said.
According to the French news publication, he was kidnapped on June 23 in a fashionable district of the French capital, taken to the basement of a villa near Nice, where he was beaten, threatened with violence, and then released after a ransom had been paid.
According to a physician at the Parisian Hôtel-Dieu hospital, Olimov had multiple bruises and injuries. He himself complained of insomnia and constant anxiety. The businessman's personal secretary told Le Monde that "it was unpleasant, but it's all over."
He arrived in Paris for negotiations with French partners and to finalize a real estate purchase transaction.
A criminal case has been opened on this fact under the Illegal deprivation of liberty by a group of persons charge, with one person arrested.
Kahramonjon Olimov owns 99.38% of the shares of the Anorbank digital bank (founded in 2020), “managing a billion dollars in assets,” and is also involved through a company registered in the Netherlands in a project to build a combined-cycle gas turbine power plant in the Surkhandarya province in southern Uzbekistan together with EDF.
The entrepreneur also owns shares in the companies Milliy To`lov Tizimlari (Hamyon payment service), the microfinance organization Clever Mikromoliya Tashkiloti, Distri For Country (collection agencies and credit bureaus), Anor Assets (financial leasing) and Dynamic Energy (electricity production by thermal power plants).
