The ringleader of a coordinated arson attack on Ukraine-linked businesses discussed kidnapping Nik Storonsky, the cofounder and CEO of Revolut, a British court heard on Thursday.
Ringleader Dylan Earl admitted aggravated arson over a 2024 attack which targeted companies in London, which were delivering satellite equipment from Elon Musk's Starlink to Ukraine.
Earl and five others are set to be sentenced on Friday after they were convicted in a plot to burn down warehouses on an industrial estate in east London on behalf of Russia's Wagner mercenary group.
According to a Reuters report covering the hearing, on the day he was arrested in April 2024 Earl communicated on Telegram with someone prosecutors say was a Wagner handler known as “Lucky Strike” regarding the kidnapping and extortion of Storonsky.
"Can you catch somebody and get him to transfer money to your accounts?" Lucky Strike wrote on Telegram before attaching the Wikipedia entry for Storonsky, who co-founded Europe’s most valuable fintech Revolut in 2015.
"He is a billionaire so he will have a lot of security and systems to protect unauthorised payments," Earl replied. "But I will research more into this and see if it's possible."
A Revolut spokesperson declined to comment.
The hearing follows reports of a series of attacks targeting top execs at crypto companies this past year. In January, the cofounder of French crypto unicorn Ledger David Balland and his partner were kidnapped and held to ransom in central France being released.
And in May, four men unsuccessfully attempted to abduct a woman and her young child in central Paris, who were later reported to be the daughter and grandchild of the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange platform Paymium.
