There are the announcements. And there are the facts. Laurent Nunez, Minister of the Interior, gave an interview to La Tribune Dimanche in which he details what he presents as a battle plan on three fronts: drug trafficking, crypto-kidnapping and urban violence. An ambitious agenda, served with a martial tone. It remains to be seen whether reality will give him time to apply it.
Drug trafficking: the law is there, the decrees follow
On the narcotics front, the minister is playing the card of continuity. The Narcotrafic law, promulgated at the end of 2025, is gradually gaining momentum. Before the Senate committee in January, Nunez had set a clear objective: that all implementing decrees be issued by June 2026, finally offering investigators the expected tools. Among them, a decree requiring operators to verify the identity of buyers of prepaid SIM cards, a blind spot that networks massively exploit to communicate beyond the reach of intelligence services.
On the ground, the results remain mixed. The arson attack in Décines-Charpieu on May 11, which cost the lives of three people in an alleged settlement of scores linked to drug trafficking, crudely illustrates the limits of Place Nette operations, however repeated they may be. Nunez himself recognizes that neighborhoods dismantle and rebuild themselves. Rhetorical firmness is not enough to fill the holes.
“We are talking about violence committed by delinquents who want to seize cryptocurrencies by sequestering people in their homes. (…) kinds of home-jackings of rare violence with, sometimes, mutilations in order to obtain the transfer of cryptocurrencies under threat”
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Crypto-raptures: France the world champion it did not want to be
This is the most embarrassing front. Since 2023, 135 incidents of kidnapping and kidnapping linked to cryptoassets have been recorded. The year 2025 had already seen the counters panic with 67 cases, and 2026 is off to a terrifying start: 47 cases in just four months. France holds a world record that it did not seek.
The procedure is now well documented. Masked and armed commandos, sometimes recruited via social networks, operate throughout the territory, from the Toulouse region to Île-de-France via Burgundy or the Alps. The target: crypto investors or entrepreneurs identified, often via data leaks or tax declarations. Since January 1, 2026, the European directive DAC8 requires exchange platforms to declare the full identity of their users to the tax authorities, creating an unprecedented risk of data leakage.
What Nunez adds to this picture is a worrying evolution of targets. Initially, attackers primarily targeted “visible cryptocurrency entrepreneurs.” But now, “they attack all owners”
“France the epicenter of this new violence”
We had already covered the Alsatian affair of May 11, five arrested for attempted kidnapping and extortion, as well as the Pnaco report published at the end of April, which reported 88 indictments including 75 in pre-trial detention. The judicial response is being organized, but the feeling of impunity persists. More than ten minors are among the suspects, often recruited on Telegram loops to serve as “little hands”.
Faced with this threat, the ministry deployed police officers and gendarmes to carry out vulnerability audits directly at the homes and head offices of exposed professionals, with priority alert channels guaranteeing immediate intervention by elite units. A concrete response, but which today concerns a minority of well-identified professionals. The rest of the crypto community is waiting for a broader protection system, promised but still vague in its contours.
Urban violence: the overall decline masks the targeted increase
Since the start of the year, urban violence has generally fallen by 9%. On the other hand, those targeting law enforcement are up 19%.
A statistic that Nunez assumes by displaying a doctrine of systematic response: all violence calls for intervention. The message is clear. Its application depends on the means available on the ground.
The real signal from this interview is not in the measures announced or the communication stunt, some are already underway, others remain vague. It is in the fact that the Minister of the Interior devotes an explicit part of his public agenda to crypto-kidnappings. Six months ago, this subject was still treated as an institutional blind spot. Today it is included in the official battle plan. For the French crypto community, this is a late recognition, but it is one.
