Po­lice have ques­tioned and re­leased the busi­ness part­ner of kid­napped Ja­maican busi­ness­man Yohan Chin.

The de­vel­op­ment came two days be­fore Chin’s fam­i­ly made a pub­lic ap­peal for his ab­duc­tors to con­tact them to com­plete ne­go­ti­a­tions for his safe re­lease in a news­pa­per ad.

Chin, whose fam­i­ly owns a chain of busi­ness­es in Ja­maica and Cana­da, is still miss­ing and it is un­cer­tain whether he is even alive. A US$6 mil­lion ran­som was de­mand­ed for his safe re­turn.

Chin’s busi­ness part­ner, who was ar­rest­ed for a sec­ond time this week, has since changed his ve­hi­cle and is said to be in hid­ing. On the last oc­ca­sion, po­lice ques­tioned him for 72 hours be­fore re­leas­ing him again. So far, Chin’s Mer­cedez Benz has been sold along with a Porsche, as fam­i­ly and friends try to raise mon­ey to meet the kid­nap­pers’ de­mands.

How­ev­er, a source who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty told Guardian Me­dia that one of Chin’s ac­quain­tances was in­volved in a drug theft and he was be­ing held cap­tive un­til the drugs and ran­som are paid in full.

The fam­i­ly has been ne­go­ti­at­ing with the kid­nap­pers for the past two weeks. The kid­nap­pers are said to be well con­nect­ed and are be­lieved to be re­spon­si­ble for oth­er kid­nap­pings in the past.

The ab­duc­tion was sim­i­lar to that of Shel­don Sukhdeo, broth­er of slain drug deal­er Sheron Sukhdeo. Chin’s busi­ness part­ner re­port­ed the kid­nap­ping two days af­ter it oc­curred.

In a state­ment, the part­ner said he re­ceived a call from Chin on April 14 in­di­cat­ing that armed men wear­ing ski masks and two with hats with the word ‘po­lice’ came to his home. Chin told his busi­ness part­ner he was at an un­known lo­ca­tion and ad­vised him to or­gan­ise some mon­ey, promis­ing to call back with fur­ther in­struc­tions.

When Chin con­tact­ed his the part­ner again, he was ad­vised him to go his (Chin’s) home and se­cure a Porsche car for safe keep­ing but when the part­ner ar­rived the house was ran­sacked.

On April 16, Chin again called the part­ner ask­ing him to sell the Porsche and his Mer­cedes Benz. Sev­er­al times af­ter that, Chin called his part­ner to con­tact their lawyer to or­gan­ise and sell a piece of land which they had planned to use in a busi­ness deal.

How­ev­er, calls then went cold for two weeks, prompt­ing the fam­i­ly to take out an ad­ver­tise­ment ask­ing the ab­duc­tors to con­tact them to com­plete ne­go­ti­a­tions.