The Spanish anti-capitalist activist Enric Durannicknamed “Robin Hood of the Banks”was charged and placed in preventive detention in June in France for a money laundering case cryptocurrenciesAFP learned on Wednesday from a source close to the process.
Durán, 48, originally from Barcelona, is suspected of having participated, between August 2021 and June 2024, in a scam orchestrated by an organized gang through the selling cryptocurrencies in exchange for euros for a client who posed as the manager of a furniture website.
On Friday he will appear before an investigating judge. Nanterre courtnorthwest of Paris, where the case is being investigated, and on Monday he will request his release.
The Spanish activist insists that at no time was he aware that the money of his client, also arrested along with two of his alleged accomplices, came from a illegal business and was used for laundering.
“An activity cannot be punished when there is evidence that I had no intention of collaborating with any fraudulent scheme,” he said in a text released by his lawyer, Laura Ben Kemoun. Durán added that his questioning of the banking system and his anti-capitalist stance were used as evidence against him.
“Given the experience of the interrogation, one might believe that the French police were more interested in finding a reason to incriminate me than in the truth,” Duran said, adding that the police refused to read the exchanges he had with his alleged client.
Durán became known in September 2008, when he announced that he had “robbed” 39 banks a total of 492,000 euros (548,000 dollars) obtaining a series of personal loans thanks to falsified pay slips. At the time, he described the events as a “new form of civil disobedience“.
He activist was arrested in Barcelona in March 2009 after returning from abroad and was released a few months later. Since then, he has repeatedly refused to appear before the Spanish courts.
According to his lawyer, Durán specialized several years ago in the conversion of currencies into cryptocurrencies as an alternative to the monopoly of banks. In this regard, it denounces the lack of legal clarity surrounding the purchase and sale of digital assets between individuals.
“This case should make us all pay attention to how French justice is criminalizing P2P trading. [entre particulares] cryptocurrency, which is a legal but unregulated activity,” he denounced in his text.
