“There are a lot of moral considerations”, a “media enthusiasm and a desire to display”, denounces Karim Benzema’s lawyer, Antoine Vey, Wednesday, November 24 on franceinfo, who will appeal the sentence of his client to one year in prison and a 75,000 euros fine from the footballer for complicity in attempted blackmail in the case of the sextape. According to him, “the sanction which is pronounced is totally disproportionate”.
franceinfo: Why are you appealing against the conviction of Karim Benzema?
Antoine Vey: There are three obvious reasons for appeal. The first is that the court itself recognized that Karim Benzema was not informed of the underlying project of the other defendants, so it is quite difficult to consider an accomplice of an act that, by nature, we ignore. . The second reason is that we are in the reading, the exegesis of formulas which are pronounced on the telephone between two men of which we know neither the context, nor the content.
“I believe there was a desire to condemn because it is a media file and from that point on, we always manage to pull a few strings to do it.”
Antoine Vey, lawyer for Karim Benzemato franceinfo
The fact remains that Karim Benzema was absolutely not informed of any criminal project, which he maintains and that he will continue to say that he only intervened because he wanted to propose a solution. to his teammate and absolutely not to blackmail him. There is no demonstration of the character of blackmail in the action of Karim Benzema, he wanted to put Mathieu Valbuena in contact with someone whom he thought he could solve his problem for him. It is the reverse of blackmail. Finally, the sanction which is pronounced is totally disproportionate in view of the nature of this case. Behind this judgment, we perceive a form of media frenzy and a desire to display which is not justified.
Are you surprised that the judgment is more severe than the requisitions from the Versailles prosecutor’s office?
When we try to make a balanced judgment, we are not trying to display something that is disproportionate anyway, so I am surprised but unfortunately not surprised by this desire to display because we are talking about a affair which fascinated the whole of France. But it should still be remembered that Karim Benzema was not informed of the project and that, anyway, complicity in this context should not give rise to a sanction at that level. It is mainly display and mainly a desire to clearly state what had been decided at the start of this judicial investigation without listening to either Karim Benzema’s version or the arguments of his lawyers. There are many moral considerations which go beyond the strictly legal framework in the judgment. We wondered a lot about the friendly, unfriendly intention … In reality, we should have stuck to the law. The offense for which Karim Benzema was convicted does not appear to us to be legally founded and this is what we will argue before the Court of Appeal.
Karim Benzema was unable to defend his version in court because he did not come to his trial. Will he come before the court of appeal?
He will come because in reality he never sought to flee from justice. He always showed up to all invitations. It was the court that heard this case at a time when professionally Karim Benzema could not go there. He argued it. The judge could have postponed this trial or explicitly asked Karim Benzema to appear. He did not do it. We thought it was because the new declarations were ineffective or irrelevant, clearly this was not the case. The appeal will probably give Karim Benzema the opportunity to explain himself and the arguments will be presented differently for a judgment which we hope will be different.