A man who confessed to participating in the robbery of Kim Kardashian West in Paris four years ago will not benefit financially from the book he has published about the heist after an order by a French court. Lawyers representing the night watchman at the luxury residence where Kardashian was robbed said they had obtained a court order “authorising the seizure of rights” on the sales of Yunice Abbas’s book, I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian, which was published at the beginning of the month. Abbas, who calls himself a “part-time crook,” was one of 12 people arrested for nabbing a small fortune in after surprising Kardashian in the rented apartment. As his book’s title makes clear, Abbas, 67, has no plans to contest the charges at a trial prosecutors are hoping will begin this year. Kardashian was targeted while she was in France to attend Paris fashion week. It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France in two decades, with the thieves making off with a combined haul worth about €9m ($10.8m). Most of the pieces were never found: police have recovered only a diamond-encrusted cross that Abbas dropped while leaving the scene by bike. He was one of five men aged 60 to 72 – dubbed the “Grandpa robbers” in the press – who entered Kardashian’s apartment at around 2.30am on the night of 3 October 2016. The star later told police the men, at least one of whom was wearing a jacket with police insignia, tied her up with plastic cables and adhesive tape, and placed her in the bathtub. In his book, Abbas gives the details of what he describes as a perfectly executed crime. The night guard’s lawyers said that “our client considers this communication campaign indecent. He maintains that the individuals who attacked him that evening were not peaceful ‘grandpa robbers’, but determined and armed criminals.” The watchman, who had been working to finance his studies at the Sorbonne university, was “neutralised by several people under threat of a gun”, the lawyers said. Seizing the rights to the sale of the book means that Abbas will not be able to profit from the publication, they added. The royalties will be sequestered “until the day they can be handed over to our client” in compensation for the damage suffered, they said, stressing that their client had sustained psychological consequences as a result of the armed robbery. Abbas and his alleged accomplices were arrested three months after the robbery. They include several French suspects with criminal records dating back to the 1980s and 90s. Abbas has already spent a total of 21 years in jail in his life but told AFP he had been “clean” for nine years before being offered the Kardashian heist “at a time when I needed the money”. After 22 months behind bars for the robbery, a judge released him on health grounds, and he hopes a jury will be now lenient after he underwent heart surgery. The book’s publishers, Archipel, have not commented on Abbas’s literary efforts.