Paris Kidnap

The Italian disease spreads

It was a routine trip--for 150 yards. Chauffeur Jean Denis wheeled his gray Peugeot 604 out of the apartment-house garage on Paris' Avenue Foch, scarcely noticing the motorbike ahead of him or the blue van behind. He slowed to ease around another van that was double parked. The cyclist then stopped, hopped off his bike and walked back waving a pistol. Men sprang from the parked van and pulled Denis from the car. The last thing the chauffeur saw was the Peugeot moving off with his boss in the back, imprisoned by men on either side of him.

The passenger, Baron Edouard-Jean Empain, 40, was the boyish-looking scion of a Belgian family that built the Paris subway system at the turn of the century, and now, with Empain as overseer, controls a French conglomerate comprising 150 companies with 130,000 employees and annual sales of $4.7 billion. The kidnap vehicles and the Peugeot were found abandoned. Was Empain the victim, in the current European terminology, of a kidnap `a 1'italienne, engineered by professional criminals purely for ransom, or of a kidnap `a l'allemande, pulled off by terrorists trying to force the release of jailed compatriots?

Cranks purporting to represent various groups claimed responsibility. But it was soon clear that the kidnap was `a 1'italienne. Along with a ransom demand reported to be $20 million, the kidnapers sent the baron's family a letter written by him and his identification card, plus further proof that they held him: a bit of flesh from a fingertip.

Four other French businessmen have been seized and released (for ransoms as high as $3.2 million) in the past three years. But Empain is the most important yet, and his kidnaping occurred at a time when such crimes have become regular incidents elsewhere, especially in Italy. Justice Minister Alain Peyrefitte appealed for Empain's return, citing the "hundreds of kidnapings" in Italy and their effect on that country. Said he: "We don't want a reign of violence and anarchy" in France. Other wealthy Frenchmen noted grimly that Empain habitually went about without bodyguards, something no Italian or West German worth his limousine would dare any more. -

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