Kim Kardashian's jewels seized in the Paris heist have been MELTED and the only piece left is her £3.5m engagement ring, gang boss tells police

The only piece of jewellery left after the multi-million pound jewel heist from Kim Kardashian's Paris hotel is her engagement ring, the gangster arrested for the crime has said.

Aomar Ait Khedache, a 60-year-old nicknamed 'Omar le Vieux' (Old Omar) told police his gang had melted down and sold most of the stolen goods but still have the £3.5 million engagement ring given to her by Kanye West.

A transcript of his testimony given to police after his arrest earlier this month in connection with the October robbery was leaked to Le Monde newspaper.

Khedache said his team stayed in Paris for a short time after the heist before they went to the Belgian town of Antwerp, a diamond trading centre, to sell the stolen goods which the US star said were worth around €9 million (£8.7m).

'So that the jewels wouldn't be recognised, we took a joint decision to melt them down,' Mr Khedache told police.

'One of us took care of that…. He came back with bars… Altogether there must have been a bit more than 800 grammes,' said the suspect, whose DNA was found at the crime scene at the luxury Paris apartment where Kardashian was staying.

He said they had sold off the transformed jewels but did not say how much they obtained for them.

The scene outside the hotel in Paris where Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint and had £9million worth of jewellery stolen

Criminals often have stolen jewellery melted down and the metal is then transformed into bars and the stones altered to remove any identifying marks.

Mr Khedache said they had not sold off the engagement ring worth £3.5million that the 36-year-old Keeping Up With the Kardashians star had shown off in a social media the day before she was robbed.

He told police that 'somebody has it' without giving any names and said 'we're all afraid to sell it because it is a stone that's very easy to identify.'

Kardashian made a statement to police shortly after the robbery and told them that the robbers had threatened her with a gun after they tied up the concierge and burst into her apartment.

But Mr Khedache said that his gang treated their victim with respect and 'with gentleness.'

Kardashian was blamed by the French police chief for 'flaunting her jewellery on social media' in the aftermath of the crime

'We didn't take our weapons out in front of a woman,' he said in his testimony. 'The person with me tied her up on the bed… I placed her in the bath.'

Kardashian's constant posting on social media made it easy to plan the heist, said Khedache.

'The jewels were shown on the internet, and (she said) that she didn't wear fakes… the time she would arrive in France, you just had to look at the internet and you knew everything, absolutely everything,' he said.

He said his gang had 'very precise information' about the movements of the star during her fateful Paris trip last October which they got from 'someone who was very close to her.'

A total of 10 have now been charged including five accused of a direct role in the robbery, during which Kardashian was bound and gagged, then robbed at gunpoint of jewellery worth almost £9 million.