Ligue 1: Donnarumma burglary mastermind jailed for nine years

Ilyas Kherbouch has been sentenced to nine years in prison for organising the violent burglary of Gianluigi Donnarumma and his partner, Alessia Elefante, in Paris in July 2023. The Paris court ordered that he remain in custody. Prosecutors had sought a 10-year sentence for the 21-year-old, who was accused of directing the operation from his prison cell and denied involvement throughout the trial.

Khyan M., 22, whom prosecutors described as a second organiser, was acquitted. The prosecution had requested nine years against him. Moktar D., who acted as a lookout on the night of the attack, was sentenced to five years, with two years suspended under probation conditions. Several of the people involved have not been identified.

The burglary took place during the night of 20 to 21 July 2023 at the couple’s apartment on Avenue Montaigne, one of the most exclusive areas of the French capital. The attackers woke Donnarumma and Elefante, tied them up and assaulted them. Donnarumma was beaten in the face with reinforced gloves until he bled, while Elefante, who was pregnant at the time, was strangled with a charging cable.

The group spent only a few minutes taking cash, jewellery, watches and luxury bags. The value of the stolen property was estimated at almost €1 million. The incident was treated as a home-jacking, a form of robbery in which residents are targeted inside their homes. The prosecutor linked the case to a wider series of attacks on prominent residents in western Paris between 2022 and 2025, identifying seven celebrities as victims of similar crimes.

The case has also carried consequences beyond the loss of property and the physical injuries. The prosecution said Elefante suffered a miscarriage shortly after the attack and attributed it to the shock of that night. A man who had been present during the burglary later died by suicide in his prison cell at Fresnes on 10 May 2024. He had reportedly faced threats after being accused of informing on others and was a childhood friend of the only defendant known to have been at the apartment during the home-jacking.

The trial also examined the circumstances surrounding Kherbouch’s alleged role. He had become known in connection with an escape from Villepinte prison in Seine-Saint-Denis in March, while his name appeared in several other kidnapping cases. Prosecutors argued that he had arranged the Donnarumma operation while incarcerated. Kherbouch rejected that account, saying that messages and videos recovered from telephones he used in prison had also been accessed by other people.

The proceedings ended after two days marked by sharp contrasts. The first day included an outburst in which one defendant insulted police officers after his brothers were removed from the courtroom. He later apologised. During questioning, he spoke about an childhood marked by repeated violence from his father and described his escape as a release from prison life. He had been incarcerated since the age of 14, and prosecutors calculated that the sentence would keep him in prison until April 2043. The court’s decision came shortly after 1am.

Donnarumma and Elefante did not attend the trial. The goalkeeper, now 27, is an Italy international whose career has taken him from AC Milan to Paris Saint-Germain and then to Manchester City in the 2025-26 season. Manchester City are his current club, while PSG was his team when the attack occurred. The sentence closes the main phase of the criminal case, but the damage left by the burglary extends beyond the nearly €1 million in stolen possessions.

For French football, the case adds to concerns about the exposure of high-profile players and their families to organised home attacks. The prosecutor described a pattern involving increasingly young offenders and several celebrity targets. Kherbouch’s conviction establishes the sentence for the alleged organiser, while Khyan M.’s acquittal shows that the court did not accept the prosecution’s case against every suspected coordinator. Moktar D.’s punishment separately recognises his role as lookout rather than as an alleged organiser.