This time, the court date should suit Karim Benzema. Absent from his trial at first instance, in October 2021, for “sporting reasons”the striker of the Blues and Real Madrid will have to appear on June 30, according to our information, before the 9and correctional chamber of the Versailles Court of Appeal, in the context of the appeal trial of the case of “sextape blackmail” exercised in 2015 on his former team-mate in the France team, Mathieu Valbuena.
Sentenced, in November 2021, to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 75,000 euros, the player had appealed the judgment of the criminal court. His lawyers then said that their client would come in person “to explain” on the occasion of this new hearing. Contacted, one of Karim Benzema’s advisers, Sylvain Cormier, declined to comment.
“It is established by the procedure and the debates that Mr. Benzema, in response to the solicitation of his friend Karim Zenati, and informed of the blackmail maneuvers to which his teammate Mathieu Valbuena was the object, which remained without success, agreed to lend his assistance in these maneuvers in order to convince his teammate to give in to blackmail and pay a sum of money”had concluded the judges in their reasons.
An audience fixed more than four months before the World Cup
For the magistrates, who had gone beyond the requisitions of the prosecution, “the importance of Mr. Benzema’s official income, estimated by himself and by the specialized press at around ten million euros per year in 2015 from his club’s income alone, makes it possible to exclude any financial motivation for these actions, which were to provide their beneficiaries with a sum of between 25,000 and 150,000 euros”. According to them, his motive was “unconditional friendship” that he “wore to Karim Zenati”.
Karim Benzema, who must pay 80,000 euros by virtue of non-pecuniary damage to Mr. Valbuena, should not be the only defendant to appear during this summer: Karim Zenati has appealed on civil interests and could also be present during the hearing.
This will take place just after the matches of the France team scheduled for the League of Nations in June. It will be held more than four months before the World Cup in Qatar (from November 21 to December 18). At 34, Karim Benzema could play his last World Cup with the Blues in the emirate. He was suspended in December 2015 by Noël Le Graët, president of the French Football Federation (FFF), because of this affair, then banned by coach Didier Deschamps until Euro 2021.
If by chance the conviction at first instance of the star was confirmed by the Versailles Court of Appeal, this decision should not have any consequences on the sporting level. In November 2021, as soon as the verdict of the Versailles judges was announced, Mr. Le Graët repeated to The Team : “This sanction does not change anything for me. (…) It is selectable. He has the right to work. You can make a mistake, get a suspended sentence and go back to work. »
A new conviction by the Versailles Court of Appeal would however make the atmosphere around the Blues and their striker heavier before the planetary tournament, during which the players of Didier Deschamps will try to retain their title.