After the abortion of his first trial, Paul Zaidan, accused of having kidnapped and kidnapped the CEO of Chez Cora restaurants, will have to undergo a second.
Posted at 11:49
Judge François Dadour made this decision Monday morning, at the Laval courthouse.
The parties will return to court on Friday, and that is when dates for a new trial are expected to be set.
Last Friday, after six days of deliberation, the jury said it could not agree on a verdict. The judge decreed the abortion of the trial, which lasted more than two months.
Paul Zaidan, a former Chez Cora franchisee, is accused of kidnapping Nicholas Tsouflidis, president of the restaurant chain, and demanding an $11 million ransom from his mother Cora Tsouflidou, the company’s founder .
The Crown argued that significant circumstantial evidence linked Paul Zaidan to the events of March 8, 2017.
Nicholas Tsouflidis recounted during the last trial that three men allegedly abducted him from his home in Mirabel and transported him in the trunk of a car to the basement of a house, where he remained chained for a few hours, before being released on a Laval road.
During the sequestration, the kidnappers reportedly contacted Cora Tsouflidou to pay them 11 million, following the instructions in a letter left in her son’s house.
The prosecution presented 40 witnesses and voluminous technical evidence during the trial, while the defense presented no witnesses. Paul Zaidan himself did not testify in his defense.
The defense thesis was rather that Nicholas Tsouflidis would have himself organized his own kidnapping, or would have simulated it, in order to accuse his brother, Théoharis Tsouflidis, with whom he was estranged.