Two men receive jail terms for violent burglary of Man City’s Donnarumma

Two men have been handed prison terms for their involvement in a violent break-in at the Paris home of Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma. The Paris Criminal Court sentenced Ilyas Kherbouch, 21, to nine years behind bars and imposed an €80,000 fine. Co-defendant Moktar D received a five-year sentence, two of which were suspended and subject to probation. A third man, Khyan M, who prosecutors suspected of helping organise the raid from prison, was acquitted.

The court heard that in the early hours of 21 July 2023 four masked intruders entered the couple’s ninth-floor apartment via the rooftops. Donnarumma and his then-fiancée, Alessia Elefante, were dragged from their bed, threatened at knifepoint and tied up. Donnarumma was beaten with hard knuckle gloves until he bled, while Elefante was choked with a phone charging cable. The couple were separated and held captive during the attack.

A seven-person gang — some members still unidentified — fled the scene with cash, jewellery, watches and luxury bags that Donnarumma later estimated at just under €1 million. Prosecutors had sought prison terms ranging from four to ten years; they had requested the maximum 10 years for Kherbouch and had sought nine and six years respectively for Khyan M and Moktar D during closing arguments.

At the time of the break-in Donnarumma was playing for Paris Saint-Germain; he later transferred to Manchester City in 2025. The trial also drew attention to wider security concerns in the Avenue Montaigne neighbourhood, which prosecutors said had been increasingly targeted by younger criminals and had seen multiple celebrity victims between 2022 and 2025. The proceedings included references to Kherbouch’s earlier escape from Villepinte prison and testimony that Moktar D had acted as a lookout; a friend of Moktar implicated in the case died by suicide in custody during the investigation.