Two members of a criminal group have been detained for blackmailing and kidnapping a man from Grigoriopol from whom they demanded 200 thousand US dollars, police announced in a statement on Monday, January 6.

According to the release, the two kidnapped the man in January while he was in a village in Grigoriopol and transported him by boat across the Dniester to Old Dubasarii, Criuleni. There, they robbed him of $3,500 and kept him in a cellar for three days, where they beat him and threatened to kill him until they obtained a promise that he would send them $200,000.

“The two men transported him in the trunk of a car to the town of Vadul lui Voda, where they released him. Then, for more than two weeks, until the beginning of February, the two men sent reminder e-mails to the victim’s son. And when he had accumulated the requested amount of money, the perpetrators asked him to convert it into electronic money.

The victim reported the perpetrators to the authorities and once the e-mail address confirming the requested conversion was sent, the competent authorities arrested them on Saturday, 4 February,” the statement said.

Subsequently, prosecutors from the Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organised Crime and Special Cases (PCCOCS) applied to the court for 30 days’ pre-trial detention.

According to the data in the file processed by the officers of the Investigation Directorate “Centre” of the National Investigation Inspectorate (INI), the General Directorate of Criminal Prosecution of the General Inspectorate of Police (IGP), with the support of the Analytical Directorate of the INI, jointly with the PCCOCS prosecutors, the detained man allegedly committed the crime jointly with an accomplice previously announced in a previous search, after being sentenced to 12 years for robbery.

The two men are aged 31 and 28 and reside in Chisinau. One of them is originally from Grigoriopol. The latter is also one of the defendants sent by the PCCOCS to the dock in another case for drug trafficking in Spain, as part of a group of the organization called “Borman,” which was recently sent by the Supreme Court of Justice for retrial by another panel at the Chisinau Court of Appeal, the same source reports.

Following the searches of the suspects’ homes, police officers “found and seized money in the amount of 3,500 euros, a long gun with a bullet of the AKMC MF model, a Glock 19 pistol with a bullet, an NAA revolver with a bullet, two cars involved in the crime, mobile phones. One of the phones was with the application “Telegram”, from which he was having a conversation with the injured party, with the purpose of extorting the first instalment of money, in the amount of 150,000 US dollars, which was to be converted into crypto currency.”

During the special investigative actions, INI employees established that “one of the extras would have made the call on Friday announcing that the Chisinau Court of Appeal was undermined”.

According to the law, blackmail committed under these circumstances is punishable by 13 to 15 years in prison, and until a final court ruling is handed down, the two are presumed innocent, according to the law.

At the request of the PCCOCS prosecutors, the Chisinau Ciocana Court applied preventive arrest against them for a period of 30 days.