France: Nine years in prison for the mastermind of the violent Donnarumma robbery

The main instigator of the burglary of former PSG player Gianluigi Donnarumma and his partner, who were held captive in July 2023 in their Paris apartment, was sentenced on Friday by the Paris court to nine years in prison.

The prosecution had requested a 10-year sentence for Ilyas Kherbouch, alias "Ganito," 21, who was on trial for ordering the operation from his cell and who became known after his improbable escape from Villepinte prison, in the Paris suburbs, last March. He was recaptured 13 days later.

His name appears in multiple kidnapping cases.

Considered by the prosecution to be the second instigator of the home invasion, Khyan M., 22, against whom a nine-year prison sentence had been requested, was acquitted.

Her lawyer, Céline Dadouat, said she was "satisfied and relieved" after the court's decision, delivered around 1:00 AM (23:00 GMT), which, according to her, "took the time to examine the facts, the evidence and the uncertainties."

On July 21, 2023, in the middle of the night, the couple—who were absent from the trial—were dragged from their beds and tied up: Gianluigi Donnarumma was beaten with knuckle-duster gloves until he bled. "The money, the watches!" his attackers roared. His pregnant partner, Alessia Elefante, was strangled with a phone charger cable.

The seven men, some of whom have not been identified, made off in a few minutes with cash, jewelry, watches and luxury bags, estimated by the goalkeeper of the Italian national team to be worth just under one million euros.

This burglary took place on Avenue Montaigne, one of the capital's most upscale neighborhoods, targeted by "increasingly juvenile delinquency," the prosecutor explained, listing the names of seven celebrities targeted in home invasions between 2022 and 2025 in western Paris. Ilyas Kherbouch and Khyan M. are implicated in at least two of them.

In this case, there were also "two collateral deaths", the public prosecutor recalled: the child that Alessia Elefante was expecting, whose miscarriage shortly after the burglary is attributed to the shock suffered that night, and the suicide in his cell, on May 10, 2024, of a man who was present on the night of the burglary, threatened for having been a "snitch".