Real Madrid and French forward, Karim Benzema has been sentenced to a one year suspended jail term, for conspiring to blackmail a fellow French footballer, Mathieu Valbuena with a sex tape.
Karim Benzema, on Wednesday 24th November 2021, was found guilty of complicity in attempted blackmail in “the sex tape affair”, and was also ordered to pay a €75,000 (£63,000; $84,000) fine.
Benzema, 33, was one of five people put on trial last month over the attempt to extort Frenchman Mathieu Valbuena.
According to the report by BMFTV, Karim Benseman was not accused of any pecuniary motivation, but he was pushed by his strong friendship with Karim Zenati. The court judges that Karim Benzema did not realize the criminal nature of his acts. His lawyers immediately announced that he was going to appeal. “It was clearly stated by the court that Karim Benzema was not aware of the preliminary manoeuvres. (…) We are quite stunned by this judgment. The appeal is necessary because Karim Benzema has nothing to do with it. reproach himself. He will be exonerated at the height of this appeal, ” his lawyer, Maître Antoine Vey was quoted to have said.
The other defendants were all convicted. Zenati, a repeat offender, was sentenced to 15 months in prison, a sentence that will be amended, and a fine of 3,000 euros. Houass receives an 18-month suspended sentence. Angot is sentenced to two years in prison, a sentence that will be amended.
As for Zouaoui, he receives two and a half years in prison, a sentence that cannot be adapted and therefore with a committal warrant, and a fine of 3,000 euros.
The case dates back to June 2015, when the two footballers were at a French training camp.
An intimate video of footballer Mathieu Valbuena was intercepted six years earlier on his mobile phone. And several intermediaries contact him and offer to guarantee the confidentiality of these images, for a fee. At the camp, Benzema put pressure on Valbuena to pay off the blackmailers, whom he had conspired with to act as an intermediary, prosecutors said.
During the three days of hearings, the versions of the defendants oscillated between the desire to help the player to get out of this impasse and that of extracting money from him. But the recording of a conversation between Karim Benzema and his childhood friend and intermediary in this case, Karim Zenati, broadcast in court weighed in the balance.
The court listened to the laughter and mockery of the two men in a phone conversation just after Benzema spoke to Valbuena at Clairefontaine, the Blues training centre, on October 6, 2015.
“He does not take us seriously”, explains the Real Madrid striker, a sign that “he is included in this team and in this project”, according to the prosecutor. And the footballer continued: “I said to him: ‘There is no police, no lawyer, if you want the video to be destroyed, you see my friend. If you don’t want to, make your life. he told him: ‘You know Cisse he had the same problem. What did he do? He paid.’ Me if I tell you that I have only one word, the video does not come out. After my friend, he takes over. “
Duty of exemplarity
“We never said he was benevolent (…) but it is not a criminal offense,” replied Me Antoine Vey, Benzema’s counsel. During his plea, he denounced an investigation “to charge” his client and a file filled with “assumptions and speculations” only built on the “feelings” of the plaintiff.
The prosecution had for its part required 10 months suspended prison sentence and a 75,000 euros fine against Karim Benzema, recalling the duty of exemplarity of the star of Real Madrid, “bearer of an image, hope, notoriety and moral values”. Against the four other defendants, prosecutors had requested sentences ranging from 18 months suspended to four years in prison.