French investigators are examining footage from surveillance cameras to try to identify five armed men who are still on the run after robbing the reality TV star Kim Kardashian West of an estimated €10m (£8.8m) in jewellery in one of the country’s biggest heists in decades.
Kardashian West was in Paris for fashion week when a gang of masked men wearing jackets marked “police” entered the luxury apartment building where she was staying at 2.30am on Monday.
Three men tied up the receptionist downstairs and stood guard by the door. The two others went up to Kardashian West’s bedroom, where she was lying down. They held a gun to her head, tied her up in the bathroom and escaped with a vast haul of jewels thought to include her €3.5m wedding ring.
The attack lasted only six minutes before the men escaped on bicycles.
Kardashian West’s stylist, who had hidden in a bedroom during the attack, untied Kardashian West and raised the alarm.
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Crucially, Kardashian West’s personal bodyguard, Pascal Duvier, who had trailed her to all events during fashion week, was not present during the attack. Kardashian West had “loaned” him to one of her sisters who had gone out to a nearby Paris nightclub. Called by the stylist during the attack, the bodyguard reportedly rushed to the scene, arriving minutes after the gang had fled.
The fact that the bodyguard was not present when the gang struck has raised speculation in Paris that the thieves had either been trailing and observing her extremely closely, or they had been tipped off by someone within her entourage that Duvier was not present.
Paris prosecutors declined to comment on whether the robbers might have received help from inside her circle.
Kardashian West reportedly begged the armed thieves not to kill her because she had children, according to the celebrity site TMZ.
The attack happened at an exclusive, private apartment building known as a “no address” site, where celebrities visiting Paris often rent sumptuous suites. The main door to the street was unmarked, giving the guests privacy, but the site was thought to have far less security protection than the city’s luxury hotels. The rest of the Kardashian family were staying at a luxury hotel.
Karl Lagerfeld ticked off Kardashian West on Tuesday for flaunting her wealth and for staying in that type of building.
“You cannot display your wealth and then be surprised that some people want to share it with you,” the fashion designer told Agence France-Presse after his Chanel show.
Lagerfeld had written Kardashian West a note on Monday saying: “Dearest Kim, we are all with you”, but he criticised her for showing off her jewellery to her 100 million-plus social media followers. “If you’re that famous and you put all your jewellery on the net, you go to hotels where nobody can come near to the room,” he said.
Mathieu Kassovitz, the French actor and director who shot to fame with the French film La Haine, sparked controversy on social media after the robbery and Kardashian West’s swift return to the US by tweeting: “Proud to be Parisian” and refusing to delete it.
Philippe Poutou, a car-worker and anti-capitalist presidential candidate in France, tweeted after the heist: “Nine million euros in jewellery in her bedroom? The redistribution of riches is urgent. It has seemingly begun.” He then deleted the tweet, saying he agreed with the criticism he had attracted.
The Kardashian West robbery was the biggest jewellery theft from an individual in France for more than 20 years.
Johanna Primevert, the chief spokeswoman for the Paris police departmentsaid it was “very, very rare” in the city for robbers to pose as police and target a private apartment.
Jeanne d’Hauteserre, the mayor of Paris’s 8th arrondissement, where the attack took place, told BFMTV she suspected Kardashian had either been followed or there had been some kind of tipoff that led to the attack.
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