A police officer escorts Victor Oliveira Amorim (left), who was arrested for suspected involvement in Aparecida Schunk’s kidnapping on Sunday.
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Aparecida Schunk, the mother-in-law of Formula One’s tsar Bernie Ecclestone, was freed by the São Paulo police after being held hostage for nine days.
Ecclestone’s mother-in-law was abducted July 22 ahead of the Olympics, and police ultimately managed to secure her release without Schunck being injured, nor did they pay the ransom.
“Two men were detained at the place where she was held captive in the city of Cotia” in the greater Sao Paulo area, it said. According to the BBC, Schunck was “tied up” but unharmed when found by the police and the ransom was not paid.
Elisabete Sato of Sao Paulo police said the ransom, thought to have been the largest in Brazilian history, had not been paid.
The 38-year-old Brazilian lawyer Flosi met the 85-year-old billionaire Ecclestone while she was working for the Interlagos Grand Prix in 2009.
According to the report, Ecclestone offered to come to Brazil and help the investigation with the services of a private security company.
Nevertheless, reports say that the kidnappers have demanded the $36.5 billion be divided among four bags of cash in pounds sterling, each bag holding 7 million pounds sterling.
As recently as a decade ago, several people would be seized each day in kidnappings in Brazil, often for sums of just a few hundred dollars.
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But a dedicated task force has drastically reduced the number of kidnappings in the city over the last 15 years.
