Norwegian police detained millionaire Tom Hagen, whose wife Anne-Elisabeth Falkevik Hagen was abducted in October 2018, The Local reported.

Ida Melbo Oystese, chief of the Norway's Eastern Police District, said at a press conference on Tuesday morning that Hagen had now been charged "with murder or complicity in the murder" of his wife. 

"The charge means that the case is now moving into a new phase. In this phase, it is important for me to emphasise that even though Tom Hagen has now been charged, the case is still under investigation and there are several unanswered questions," she said. 

In 2019, police hypothesized that Hagen's wife was killed. The agency believed that the abduction could be staged to cover up the murder.

At the beginning of 2019, it became known that attackers abducted the wife of a major Norwegian investor Tom Hagen on October 31, 2018 and demanded a ransom of € 9 million in cryptocurrency. The abductors threatened to kill the woman in case of non-compliance with the conditions.

Europol, Interpol, third-party cryptocurrency experts, as well as Kripos and the National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime were involved in the case.

In July 2018, the business publication Dagens Naeringsliv published material on the income of her husband who was kidnapped for 11 years from energy and real estate enterprises. The police did not confirm that the publication of this data was related to a crime.

Tom Hagen is a Norwegian engineer and major investor. In 1992, he founded the energy company Elkraft AS, which operates in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Today, he owns Holding 2 and a number of smaller enterprises. The main business of the Norwegian are energy and real estate investments.

In 2018, Hagen took 172nd place in the list of the richest people in Norway according to Capital magazine. His fortune is estimated at nearly $ 200 million.