"
Golden boy
" deposed from finance, Arnaud Mimran said Thursday, June 17 "
innocent
" in the case of the kidnapping in 2015, with a view to his extortion, of a wealthy Swiss financier who earned him to appear before the assizes from Paris.
Read also: Arnaud Mimran before the assizes for the kidnapping and extortion of a Swiss financier
The sulphurous 49-year-old businessman has been on trial since Tuesday, June 8 with five other defendants - including one of his relatives, the former Thai boxing champion Farid Khider - for kidnapping, forcible confinement and extortion in an organized gang. At the opening of his questioning on the facts, in the full and damp Voltaire room of the Paris Court of Appeal, Arnaud Mimran stood up, pink shirt and hands clasped, and proclaimed to be "
innocent in this affair
" .
Coming from a wealthy family in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, high roller and big fan of poker, Arnaud Mimran denies having ordered the incredible kidnapping of the Swiss trader - who became a civil party - as he denies having been the main beneficiary of the extortion.
Foot by foot, Arnaud Mimran contested for several hours, in sometimes bitter exchanges, each element of the case.
Two versions of the facts
Was he ruined at the time of the facts, as the investigation file suggested, which could have resulted in a very immediate need for money? Arnaud Mimran disputes this. And then "in
debt or very rich, I would never have thought of resorting to sequestration to earn money,
" he sweeps. According to the investigation file, the carbon tax crook would have brought the Swiss financier to Paris in early January 2015 to have him sequestered in order to make him buy shares in his company.
Arnaud Mimran tells a very different story: the Swiss financier told him during a meeting that he had made "
a bad deal
" by buying land in Corsica "
from thugs
". "
He is very angry and he wants to get the money back from this land
." Coming to Paris, the financier would have thought to meet a man in the middle of the organized crime towards which Mimran would have directed him, because he was "
likely to help
" in this plan, according to his version. But this man, the
alleged
"
leader
" of the kidnappers killed during the kidnapping, allegedly organized it on his own. Arnaud Mimran claims to be a stranger to this.
The six co-defendants face life imprisonment. A seventh man, a British financier fired for concealment, is wanted and will be tried by default. The verdict is expected on June 25.