Rome, November 24, 2021 – Karim Benzema guilty of complicity in the attempt to blackmail his former teammate Mathieu Valbuena with a sex videos. The French striker of Real Madrid was in fact sentenced, by the Court of Versailles, to a year in prison with suspension of the sentence, which will have to serve in case of recidivism, ea 75 thousand euros in fines. A sentence that did not convince the player’s lawyers. Benzema’s lawyer has in fact immediately announced that he will do it appeal: “The court has clearly indicated that Benzema was not aware of the preliminary maneuvers – he explained -. We are rather be amazed from this judgment. An appeal is necessary. “The court issued sentences ranging from 18 months’ imprisonment, with suspended sentences, to two and a half years against the other four defendants.
The Sextape case
The Court of Versailles held Benzema responsible for acting as an intermediary between Valbuena and the people who, in 2015, came into possession of a video deprived of the latter, with the intention of ask for money to avoid its spread. According to the judges, the conversation that the Madrid player had with his former team-mate, in which he tried to persuade him to get in touch with the blackmailers, constitutes a “deliberate” intervention, so that the then Lyon player pay to prevent video transmission. For his involvement in the case, Benzema was arrested on November 4, 2015.
Today, with the verdict, therefore continues a story that began more than five years ago, in which the attacker tried, through his lawyers, to defend his innocence. A case that cost him stay out of the national team until Deschamps decided, at the end of last season, to call him again for the European Championship and thus revoke the punishment. Noël Le Graët, president of the French Federation, had already warned three weeks ago that the judge’s decision would not affect his sports career with France, so Karim Benzema will play his second World Cup in Qatar.
The defense of Benzema
“Our first reaction is to anger towards a decision clearly contradictory, given that the court claims that Benzema was not aware of the previous maneuvers, but in the end he claims, without having the proof, that he could not have not known. It is a severe sentence and unfair that leaves us amazed. The appeal is obvious, Karim Benzema will be deemed innocent, he has nothing to be ashamed of “, are the words of thelawyer Cormier reported by L’Equipe. “The sentence does not correspond to the reality of the facts. I believe there is one distortion of some wiretaps, the appeal is indisputable “, added the lawyer Vey, who explained the absence of the Real Madrid player speaking of” professional reasons “.
The defense of the Madrid attacker insisted on the thesis that his action was exclusively to help Valbuena, without any bad intentions. There Search had asked for the lowest prison sentence against the Madrid-born, 10 months, in the end it was 12, but the toughest economic, with the argument that the attacker must have an exemplary attitude for his image to influence society. Benzema is the only one who has not been accused of blackmail and only the accusation of complicity weighed on him.
© All rights reserved