Karim Benzema found guilty in Valbuena sextape blackmail tape
Real Madrid and France football player Karim Benzema have been found guilty of conspiring to blackmail fellow player Mathieu Valbuena with a sex tape.
Benzema was one of five people on trial in Versailles, near Paris, over the 2015 extortion attempt over a sexually explicit video that was stolen from Valbuena’s phone.
He (Benzema) claimed he was only trying to help his fellow player when he approached him about the sex tape at the French national team’s training center in October 2015 and told him he could help him find someone to ‘manage’ the issue of the video.
But during sentencing on Wednesday morning, Benzema was handed a one-year suspended sentence and a €75,000 fine by the judge, in a sentence harsher than the one sought by prosecutors.
When the trial concluded last month prosecutors had demanded Benzema be given a 10-month suspended sentence and a fine of €75,000.
The maximum sentence the 33-year-old could have received was a five-year term in prison and a €90,000 fine.