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Kim Kardashian is going to court. Neary 10 years ago, the Kardashians star was robbed at gunpoint by five masked men who broke into her room at the No Address Hotel in Paris while she was there for Paris Fashion Week. After they gagged her and tied her up with cables and tape, the robbers placed her in the bathtub while they stole over $10 million worth of jewelry—including a $4 million ring from her then-husband Kanye West .
Following a lengthy investigation over the October 2016 incident, 10 people ultimately face charges . Ahead of the trial, which is scheduled to take place from April 28 to May 23 and will see the SKIMS founder take the stand, here is everything to know about the ongoing case. The SKIMS founder was alone in her bathrobe while her sister Kourtney Kardashian and her assistant were changing clothes downstairs in the early hours of Oct.
3, 2016, she said in a verbal statement to French police , later published in newspaper Le Journal du Dimance . In her statement, Kim recounted two men barging into her room, wearing hoods and jackets that read “Police.” One of them, who wore a ski mask, pointed a weapon at her and demanded that she tell them where she kept her wedding ring.
Once she obliged, she told authorities the robbers pushed her onto the bed and emptied her purse before they tied her up with plastic cables, taped her mouth shut and used tape to bind her legs together. They then carried her to the bathtub and left her there until they made their escape, after which she ran to a neighboring room to call Kourtney. While Kim was tied up in the bathtub, the robbers made their escape with a Louis Vuitton jewelry box that contained two diamond Cartier bracelets, a Lorraine Schwartz diamond necklace and diamond earrings, gold Jacob necklaces, a gold Rolex watch, a diamond necklace that read " Saint "—the name of her and Kanye’s son—as well as her iPhone 6, Blackberry and other expensive pieces.
In the months following the robbery, Kim largely remained out of the spotlight, though during the following year, she began to open up about her mindset at the time. "They're going to shoot me in the back," she said to sisters Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian in a 2017 episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians , recalling the night of the robbery . "There's no way out.
It makes me so upset to think about it." And she was also candid about the ways in which the robbery affected her mental health. “For a good year, I almost lost myself,” Kim said on an episode of The Alec Baldwin Show that same year.
“I was never depressed, but I wasn't motivated to get up and work like I used to. It shook me.” But despite the horrors, Kim expressed that she was “grateful” for the life-changing incident.
“Even though it was horrific and I wouldn't wish it upon anyone, it really did deeply change me to where now I feel like I can get back to myself,” the 44-year-old explained. “There was a lot of me that measured who I was by how much I had. I thought, 'Oh, I'm worth so much.
’ That needed to change in me.” Ten defendants, who have coined the nickname “the grandpa robbers” due to their old age at the time of heist, will be on trial for the Paris robbery. Among the defendants include, according to NBC News , the alleged mastermind Aomar “Old Omar” Ait Khedache , 69, his son Harminy , 37, Didier “Blue Eyes” Dubreucq , 69, the brother of Kim’s limo driver in Paris, Gary Madar , 35, as well as Christiane Glotin , who is accused of being an accomplice in planning the robbery.
And while the French judicial system doesn’t call for formal pleas, defendant Yunice Abbas has already admitted to his involvement in the crimes. “A robbery! In the heart of Paris. Just like in the old days,” Abbas wrote of the incident in his 2021 book I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian , alleging that he did not know the identity of their victim during their non-violent escapades.
“Excitement prickles down my spine.” Nearly a decade after the Paris robbery, E! News has learned that the reality star is, indeed, scheduled to take the stand at the $10 million trial. The business mogul’s lawyer Michael Rhodes told NBC News that his client has "tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system" in a recent statement, adding that she “has been treated with great respect by the French authorities.
” Kim wishes to proceed “with respect for all parties to the case,” he said, and is “reserving her testimony for the court and jury.” (E! and NBC News are both part of the NBCUniversal family.).
