Wealthy woman 'kidnapped at gunpoint'
Armed men have kidnapped a woman whose family owns a multi-million-euro company, Dutch police said today.
Police said they received a report last night that robbers had broken into the home of Claudia Melchers, 37, and she was taken away. They said they were treating it as a kidnapping.
Melchers family owns the Melchemie chemicals company, one of the Netherlands’ largest companies, which had supplied chemicals to Iraq in the 1980s. It was unclear whether the possible kidnapping was related to the company’s earlier dealings in the Middle East.
Police said the woman’s two young children were left unharmed in the house in an upscale neighbourhood of southern Amsterdam.
A police statement said the armed men bound and gagged a neighbour who was in the house. He was later freed by one of the children.
Police circulated a photograph of Melchers and said they had launched a broad search.
Melchemie has been at the centre of accusations in the Dutch media of illegally supplying banned chemicals to Iraq in 1984, but it has denied it intentionally violated export restrictions.
A statement posted on Melchemie’s website acknowledged overlooking a chemical that could be used for poison gas in an export deal with Iraq, but managed to recall the shipment before it reached its destination.
It called the shipment “a one-time mistake” for which it paid a fine of 100,000 guilders (€45,400). Five years later it supplied chemicals to Iraq that were not under any international bans, the website said.
