Soccer star Karim Benzema is sentenced over a sex tape blackmail scandal : NPR

Karim Benzema of Actual Madrid CF, proven right here at a match earlier this month, has been discovered responsible in a blackmail case.

Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Photographs

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Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Photographs

Karim Benzema of Actual Madrid CF, proven right here at a match earlier this month, has been discovered responsible in a blackmail case.

Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Photographs

Soccer star Karim Benzema, who performs for Actual Madrid and the French nationwide workforce, has been discovered responsible of conspiring to blackmail a former teammate over a intercourse tape. The scandal has been unfolding since 2015 and triggered main setbacks in each gamers’ careers.

A court docket in Versailles, France, handed Benzema a one-year suspended jail sentence and fined him 75,000 euros (about $84,000). The court docket additionally discovered 4 of Benzema’s co-defendants responsible of tried blackmail.

Attorneys for Benzema have informed reporters that he plans to attraction. “This consequence under no circumstances corresponds with the truth of occasions,” lawyer Antoine Vey mentioned after the decision, in accordance with Reuters.

Prosecutors have portrayed Benzema as an middleman who, in 2015, tried to persuade French teammate Mathieu Valbuena to pay blackmailers who had been threatening to launch a intercourse tape – an allegation that Benzema has lengthy denied.

On the trial, Valbuena testified that Benzema approached him and mentioned he had a pal who “can resolve your drawback,” The Related Press reported. In a wiretapped name performed in court docket, Benzema is heard speaking to Karim Zenati, his co-defendant and outdated pal, informing him in regards to the trade with Valbuena.

Benzema was faraway from the nationwide workforce after the scandal erupted. On the time, Benzema, who’s of Algerian descent, said that racism contributed to the choice.

However now, Benzema is again on the French workforce. He performed this 12 months within the European Championship.

And it doesn’t seem the court docket consequence will threaten his place on the workforce. The French Soccer Federation didn’t instantly reply to NPR’s request for remark, however has signaled prior to now month to different information organizations {that a} responsible verdict wouldn’t routinely lead to Benzema being reduce from the roster.

NPR was not instantly capable of attain Actual Madrid. Benzema is predicted to play in his membership’s Champions League match on Wednesday towards Sheriff Tiraspol.

Valbuena’s profession has been much less profitable within the years because the scandal broke. He is at the moment taking part in for Olympiacos, a Greek workforce. However he hasn’t returned to France’s nationwide workforce.

“He has suffered sports activities prejudices which can be tough to restore,” his lawyer Didier Domat informed the AP. “We’re glad that his standing as a sufferer has been acknowledged.”