Court in France says Karim Benzema used ‘subterfuge and lies’ in blackmail case over Valbuebna sex video

(CNN) – In the case for which Karim Benzema was convicted this week, it all started with a damaged cell phone.

In 2014, French footballer Mathieu Valbuena was looking to get some data from his old phone when his life changed forever and he fell into a blackmail plot.

More than seven years later, Valbuena’s former teammate in the France team, Karim Benzema, who plays for Real Madrid, was sentenced to a year in conditional prison and a fine of 75,000 euros ($ 84,000) for complicity in an attempt to blackmail.

Four of Benzema’s co-defendants at trial were also found guilty, and three of them received prison terms.

Tewfik Bouzenoun, a lawyer for the defendant Younes Houass, who received an 18-month suspended sentence, told CNN that his client was “manipulated.”

“He never engaged in blackmail or attempted to blackmail as he never asked for money. He never had a financial request,” Bouzenoun told CNN in a statement.

“I think the verdicts are less severe than those requested by the prosecutor, I see leniency and clemency in them.”

CNN is attempting to contact the attorneys for the other co-defendants.

This would have been the blackmail attempt and Benzema’s participation

Among the files transferred from Valbuena’s faulty phone in 2014 by Axel Angot was a video with sexual content involving Valbuena.

Almost a year later, Angot, with the help of others, tried to use the sex tape to blackmail the footballer, according to a statement from the Versailles court that convicted Benzema.

The men trying to blackmail Valbuena also contacted another former French international, Djibril Cissé, who, like Benzema, has played for some of the biggest clubs in Europe, in an attempt to convince Valbuena to pay.

However, Cissé refused to help, according to court documents.

So the blackmailers turned to Benzema, who was a childhood friend of one of them, Karim Zenati, to try to convince Valbuena to pay.

In passing sentence, the court ruled that Benzema, by “falsely presenting himself as a friend who wishes to help his partner”, used his professional stature and lies to convince Valbuena to “submit to blackmail by paying a sum of money and contacting his friend Karim Zenati, who was the only one who could help him. “

Benzema’s version

Following Wednesday’s verdict, Benzema’s legal team said the Real Madrid star would be acquitted “in the appeals court.”

“The court clearly announced that Karim Benzema was not aware of the earlier machinations and then at the end they said ‘he may not have known’, without any proof,” said one of Benzema’s lawyers, Sylvain Cormier, outside of the courtroom.

“He has been sentenced with a very severe, unjust and no evidence. I am quite shocked by this sentence,” Cormier added.

The court statement said that Benzema and Valbuena were not friends prior to this incident. The 33-year-old Real Madrid star did not even have Valbuena’s phone number, according to the court.

Benzema lied about his meeting with Mustapha Zouaoui, whom the court called the mastermind behind the blackmail, when investigators first questioned him, according to the documents. He was doing it to protect Zenati, a childhood friend and employee of Benzema, according to the court statement.

Benzema insisted that Valbuena should meet with Zenati. The Real Madrid player told Valbuena, who now plays for Greek Olympiacos, that the people in possession of the tape were from the main criminal groups in the city of Marseille, in southern France, and advised against going to the police or your lawyer.

Benzema even swore “by the head of his daughter” to Valbuena that there would be no copies of the sex tape, according to the court’s findings.

Valbuena discovered “that the objective of the maneuver was to extract a sum of money from him to prevent the video from being made public,” the court said in the statement.

The court acknowledged that Benzema may not have been aware of the behind-the-scenes maneuvers that were taking place, but claimed that he was personally involved in using “subterfuge and lies” to “convince his teammate [Valbuena] to submit to blackmail and to contact his trusted man, in this case Karim Zenati “.

The court issued this ruling based on the content of Benzema’s discussion with Valbuena on October 6, 2015, in the Parisian suburb of Clairefontaine, the site of the French national team’s training camp, a discussion that he detailed to Zenati immediately after. .

The recorded telephone conversations between Benzema and Zenati, which were reproduced at the trial, did not show good will towards Valbuena and “prove the existence of a blackmail attempt led by the duo,” the statement said.

The French Football Federation He said he had no statement on the case when asked by CNN, but its president, Noël Le Graët, clarified that Benzema “is still a player for the France team. This decision does not change anything for us.”

Real Madrid declined to comment on the case when CNN requested a statement.

Valbuena’s attorney, Paul-Albert Iweins, also declined to comment on Benzema’s sentence.

Following the ruling on Wednesday, Benzema played and scored in Real Madrid’s Champions League victory against Sheriff Tiraspol.