Three men have reportedly been charged over the robbery of Kim Kardashian in her Paris hotel room last year.
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The reality star and entrepreneur lost jewellery worth a reported $US9 million ($12 million) when she was bound and robbed at gunpoint by a group of men at her suite in Paris' Hôtel de Pourtalès on October 3 last year.
According to Page Six, a 63-year-old suspect, named by the prosecutors as Yunice A, received charges of armed robbery in an organised gang, kidnapping and criminal association on Thursday.
Florus H, 44, received complicity charges in the alleged robbery and kidnapping, as well as a criminal association charge. A third suspect Marceau B, 64, faced charges of handling stolen goods and criminal association.
Six more people could also be put under formal investigation on Friday, the Paris prosecutor's office said.
These are the first charges to be laid in relation to the incident.
The news comes after police arrested 17 suspects, including Kardashian's driver during her stay in Paris, on Monday morning.
Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor's office, told Reuters the arrests were made in Paris and the surrounding region, and in southern France, particularly in Grasse near Nice.
The arrests were a breakthrough in the case, which occurred in a hotel room without CCTV cameras installed. The only footage of the incident available is grainy street camera footage of five people arriving at the scene, before escaping on bicycles.
According to Reuters, the arrests were made on the basis of DNA left on the wrist ties used to bind Kardashian during the ordeal.
The DNA material of one person opened up a larger web of suspects, many of them known criminal figures in France, a police source said.
On Wednesday, four of the men were released without charges, including Kardashian's driver.
The driver's brother and 13 others remained in custody.
The October robbery triggered a change in Kardashian's public persona.
The once prolific social media user took a break from her accounts for several months, as well as her subscription app, only recently returning to the former.
Last week, Kardashian spoke publicly about the robbery for the first time in a promotional clip for the upcoming season of her family's reality television show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
"They're going to shoot me in the back. There's no way out," a tearful Kardashian tells her family in the clip, recalling the robbery. "It makes me so upset to think about it."
with Reuters
