Two men have been sentenced to prison over a violent burglary at the Paris home of Manchester City goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and his then fiancee, Alessia Elefante, in a case that ended with a Paris court handing down its verdicts on Friday.
Donnarumma was severely beaten during the raid, while Elefante was choked with a cable during the attack and later suffered a miscarriage that was attributed to the trauma of the ordeal, the court heard during proceedings.
Ilyas Kherbouch, 21, described as the mastermind behind the burglary, was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 80,000 euros by the Paris Criminal Court, having previously gained notoriety for a brazen escape from Villepinte prison last March.
Co defendant Moktar D. received a five year sentence, with two years suspended subject to a probation period, while a third man, Khyan M., who prosecutors suspected of helping orchestrate the crime from inside prison, was ultimately acquitted of all charges.
Prosecutors had sought harsher penalties across the board, requesting ten years for Kherbouch, known by the alias Ganito, and nine and six years respectively for Khyan M., known as Kiki, and Moktar D., citing the severity and coordination behind the attack.
The incident took place in July 2023, when Donnarumma and Elefante were dragged from their bed in the early hours and held captive inside their ninth floor apartment on Avenue Montaigne, having been accessed by four masked intruders who scaled the rooftops to reach the property.
Donnarumma was struck repeatedly with hard knuckle gloves until he began bleeding, as the attackers demanded cash and valuables, while Elefante was restrained with a phone charging cable before the couple were separated and bound.
A wider seven man gang, some members of whom remain unidentified, escaped within minutes with cash, jewellery, watches and luxury bags that Donnarumma later estimated to be worth close to one million euros in total.
Prosecutors described the exclusive Avenue Montaigne district as having become a target for an increasingly young criminal demographic, pointing to seven separate celebrity victims in the area between 2022 and 2025 as part of a broader, highly lucrative pattern of extreme violence directed at public figures.
The trial's second and final day passed relatively calmly, with Kherbouch offering an apology both to the court and to police officers he had insulted during the previous day's proceedings.
Both alleged ringleaders denied any involvement throughout questioning, despite investigators recovering incriminating messages and images from phones used while they were in custody. Moktar D., the only defendant physically present during the burglary, maintained he had merely acted as a lookout from a rooftop opposite the couple's building.
A childhood friend of Moktar D., also implicated in the case and suspected of acting as an informant, later took his own life while in prison, a development that added further weight to an already high profile and closely watched trial.
Donnarumma, 27, was playing for Paris Saint Germain at the time of the attack, before completing a move to Manchester City in 2025.