When Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in her Paris hotel room in October 2016, she was sure she wouldn’t escape alive. While she was thankfully physically unharmed, robbers made off with roughly $10 million worth of jewelry. Now, one of the men involved is speaking out, and it’s clear he has no regrets about what he did.
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- Kim was staying at the Hôtel de Pourtalès for Paris Fashion Week. When the men broke in, they tied her up, taped her mouth and eyes shut, and put her in the bathtub. She later described the harrowing experience to David Letterman as “seven or eight minutes of torture,” revealing that the robbers had held the concierge at gunpoint to allow them into her room, where they screamed at her in French.
- Regardless of your feelings about the Kardashians, what Kim went through sounds nothing short of terrifying. “He grabbed me and pulled me towards him. But I wasn’t wearing anything underneath [my bathrobe].So I was like, ‘OK, this is the time, I’m going to get raped. Just deal, like, it’s gonna happen.’ You know, like just prepare yourself,” she told Letterman in 2020. “But then he tied me up, with handcuffs and then zip ties, and duct tape. And then duct-taped my mouth, and then my eyes,” she said. “Before he duct-taped my eyes — because that was the last thing — I saw he found my whole jewelry box and held it up.”
- The robbers had planned the burglary for two years. They used Kardashian’s social media pages to organize everything, figuring out where she was and what items she had with her (and therefore what they could steal). Police believe her Snapchat account may have been the most revealing, perhaps even alerting the robbers to the fact that she was alone in the hotel room and therefore more vulnerable.
- Yunas Abbas, 67, was one of 12 men charged. He spent 22 months in prison but was granted early release on health grounds. While you would think he’d be remorseful about his actions, in a new interview with Vice News, he made it clear that’s not the case at all. In fact, he has no sympathy for the “traumatized” Kardashian.
- Kardashian’s blatant flaunting of wealth offended the robbers. “I went on the internet and I saw her jewelry. I saw her ring. I saw that she showed it everywhere,” Abbas said in the interview. “We knew this information through social media. We knew that she was coming for Fashion Week, so we went there to do some reconnaissance so we were sure.” He went on to reveal that after entering the hotel through a side door, they immediately “took control of the concierge” by overpowering him and tying him up.
- Kardashian’s assistant made a big mistake, according to Abbas. He says the assistant accidentally called 911 for help, which is not the emergency number in France. This meant police weren’t immediately made aware of the robbery, giving them more time to take what they wanted and get away. However, the fact that he has a lengthy criminal record and left DNA on the scene meant that police soon caught up with him and he served his time.
- Abbas insists that he didn’t really know anything about Kim Kardashian before the Paris robbery. While he knew of Kanye West, he only got to know more about Kim through her social media posts, which led him to do more research into her wealth. “I saw one of her shows where she threw her diamond in the pool, in that episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. I thought, She’s got a lot of money. This lady doesn’t care at all,” he said. Asked if he feels guilty about what he did, Abbas insisted he doesn’t. “Since she was throwing money away, I was there to collect it and that was that. Guilty? No, I don’t care. I don’t care,” he said.
- Abbas has some advice for other rich people moving forward. “They should be a little less showy toward people who can’t afford it,” he said. “For some people, it’s provocative.”
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