Karim Benzema, French Soccer Star, Is Convicted in Sex Tape Scandal

The court in Versailles, southwest of Paris, heard how Valbuena was first alerted in 2015 by another France teammate to the existence of an intimate video of him, believed to have been stolen from Valbuena’s mobile phone. In June of that year, Valbuena received several phone calls from men threatening to publish the video if he did not pay them tens of thousands of euros. Valbuena refused and instead filed a criminal complaint.

After several unsuccessful attempts, the blackmailers were suspected of having contacted Zenati, in hopes that he would push Benzema to speak with Valbuena and encourage him to pay, the court was told.

In October 2015, in a conversation with Valbuena at the French squad’s training facilities in Clairefontaine, near Paris, Benzema said that he could help his teammate by putting him in touch with someone who could fix the problem, the court heard.

Benzema, who did not attend the trial, has acknowledged that he acted as an intermediary but has always maintained that he was merely offering Valbuena friendly advice on how to handle the blackmailing attempt, not taking part in it.

But Valbuena said that he had interpreted Benzema’s role differently. “I felt like Karim Benzema wanted to scare me,” Valbuena testified at trial, according to French news reports.

After the conversation between the players, Benzema spoke crudely and mockingly about his teammate in a phone call with Zenati that was tapped by the police and later leaked to news media.

On the call, which was played at trial, Benzema told Zenati that Valbuena “isn’t taking us seriously” and that Benzema had told Valbuena, “If you want the video to be destroyed, my friend comes up to see you in Lyon and you sort it out face to face with him.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/sports/soccer/karim-benzema-verdict-sex-tape-trial.html