Four men have been found guilty of breaking into a luxury residence in Paris and stealing jewellery worth millions of euros from the American reality TV star Kim Kardashian when she attended fashion week in 2016.
Three pensioners and one man in his 30s were convicted of carrying out the armed heist, which was thought to be the biggest robbery of an individual in France in 20 years. Four other people were found guilty of assisting in the plot or related charges. Two people were acquitted of accusations they handed out information about Kardashian’s whereabouts.
The armed, masked men who were dressed in police jackets, arrived by bike or on foot just before 3am on 3 October 2016 at Kardashian’s exclusive building near Paris’s Place de la Concorde, known as a “no address” site, where celebrities often rent sumptuous suites.
They held a receptionist at gunpoint and then went up to Kardashian’s room where they held her hostage with a gun, tying her hands and feet and taping her mouth. They escaped with jewellery worth up to an estimated €10m. The jewels, which were never found, included a 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring given to Kardashian by her then husband, the rapper Kanye West, estimated to be worth £3m.
The leaders of the gang, aged in their 60s and 70s, were nicknamed the “grandpa robbers” by French media. But the state prosecutor, Anne-Dominique Merville, had told jurors not to be fooled by their age or “reassuring wrinkles”, saying they were seasoned criminals with long track records and previous prison sentences.
Aomar Aït Khedache, 68, a retired restaurant owner alleged to have masterminded the robbery, was handed the heaviest sentence of three years in prison plus five years suspended, but due to time already served in jail he will not return to detention. For the same reason, none of the convicted men were sent to prison.
The court heard Aït Kadeche ‘“gave orders”, recruited others and travelled to Belgium to sell the jewellery. He is now deaf and cannot speak, so he read the court’s questions on a typed transcript, writing his answers with a pen and paper, projected on to a screen. “I ask for forgiveness. I can’t find the words. I am very sorry,” he wrote as the trial ended.
Didier Dubreucq, 69, was found guilty as well as Yunice Abbas, 71, who admitted to arriving at the scene with two accomplices on bicycles to “keep watch”. Abbas had told the court: “All I have to offer you is regret. I’m sorry.” Marc-Alexandre Boyer, the youngest member of the group, now in his 30s, was also convicted.
In a statement after the verdict, Kardashian said she was “deeply grateful to the French authorities for pursuing justice”.
She said: “The crime was the most terrifying experience of my life, leaving a lasting impact on me and my family. While I’ll never forget what happened, I believe in the power of growth and accountability and pray for healing for all.”
Kardashian, 44, a billionaire celebrity influencer and business owner who is now a criminal justice advocate in the US, attended the trial in Paris, telling the court her life had been changed by the robbery and she had feared she would be raped and murdered by the masked gunmen who entered her rented two-floor suite.
On the day of the break-in, Kardashian and her reality TV star sister, Kourtney, had attended an exclusive lunch, then several fashion shows where they were photographed, followed by a dinner at a fashion house in the city centre, returning to their suite after midnight.
Kim Kardashian’s Paris chauffeur told the court that everywhere she went there was a crowd of paparazzis on motorbikes. He said she always stayed at the same exclusive residence when in Paris and would take advantage of the photographers’ presence, getting out of the car a few metres from the residence’s front door “in order to get photographed” while she walked along.
That night, Kourtney Kardashian changed clothes and went out again to a Paris nightclub. Kim Kardashian insisted her bodyguard should accompany her sister. Meanwhile, she stayed home without security protection in the upstairs bedroom of her suite, while her stylist went to sleep in a downstairs room. Kardashian spent a while working on her computer and posting online. At that time, Kardashian routinely posted most of her daily movements and whereabouts on social media, where she also displayed her jewellery, including the large diamond engagement ring. Those details on social media may have facilitated the thieves’ targeting of her.
Meanwhile, at 2am, the lobby of the residence was staffed only by one receptionist. Abderrahmane Ouatiki, 48, who is Algerian, was working as a night receptionist to fund himself as he completed a Sorbonne University PhD thesis on the semiotics of extremist discourse.
Ouatiki said that after 2am he saw three masked men “with police jackets on” approach the glass door to reception and gesture to him to open up. Thinking they were police officers, he opened the door. Security camera footage from the street would later show that the men had arrived leisurely by bike or on foot, to avoid a car raising suspicions.
He said they handcuffed him, showed him an automatic pistol and held another gun to his neck as they asked him: “Where is the rapper’s wife?” He knew that meant Kardashian because he had done some photocopying for her a few days before.
Two of the masked men held a gun to Ouatiki and took him in the lift with them to Kardashian’s apartment. As they approached her bedroom, Ouatiki said Kardashian called out “Hello? Hello?”, thinking it might be her sister Kourtney returning from the nightclub.
Kardashian told the court she was in a hotel robe ready to sleep having packed up everything including her pyjamas ready to fly back to New York the following day.
She said: “I didn’t understand what was happening. I was just about to fall asleep. I was naked with a robe on and I pulled it.”
The robbers only spoke French and she didn’t understand what they were saying. “I heard one of the men saying forcefully ‘ring, ring’ a few times over and pointing at his hand,” she said. The robbers found her diamond ring but were not satisfied and dragged her into another room where they found her jewellery box.
Kardashian, who thought at first it was a terrorist attack, was held by the neck at gunpoint. She said: “They threw me on the bed and the smaller one started to tie my hands together with a zip tie. I was pretty hysterical. I looked at the gentleman who was the concierge and said: ‘What is going to happen to us? Are we going to die?’”
She said her robe fell open and she felt certain she would be raped and shot dead.
She asked Ouatiki to tell the men: “I have babies; I have to make it home. They can take everything but I have to make it home to my babies.” She said: “He just looked at me and said: ‘I don’t know what is going to happen to us.’”
Kardashian was tied up, her mouth was taped over and she was dragged to the bathroom and left there while the men left the receptionist in a side-room near the hotel lobby and escaped. She later managed to loosen her hand ties against the edge of the bathroom sink.
She told the court her life had changed. “It changed the way that I felt safe at home,” she said, adding that she now had up to six security guards there. “We never felt that we were unsafe before this. This experience changed everything.”
In court, some of the men apologised to Kardashian. She said to Aït Khedache in court: “I forgive you for what has taken place but it does not change the emotion, the feelings, the trauma and the way my life is forever changed.”
