Karim Benzema, 33, compared Wednesday, October 20, with four co-defendants, accused of being the actors of the blackmail attempt against Mathieu Valbuena. But the star striker of Real Madrid, declared candidate for the Golden Ball in the wake of his performances with the Blues whom he found in the spring, did not appear in court.
His lawyer, Antoine Vey, explained his absence for reasons “professional” : the player, who theoretically incurs five years in prison and a 75,000 euro fine, played a Champions League match in Ukraine on Tuesday evening and must prepare for the “Clasico” against FC Barcelona on Sunday.
An absence that Mathieu Valbuena’s lawyer, who is present in the criminal court, has “deplored”. “For five years, (Benzema) has been proclaiming that he wants a confrontation with my client, I hope that the court will draw the consequences”, added Me Paul-Albert Iweins.
At the bar Wednesday morning, wearing gray pants and a black shirt, Mathieu Valbuena recalled the chronology of events. He heard about this story for the first time in May 2015, when his former teammate in Marseille Djibril Cissé – a time indicted in this case before being dismissed – contacted him to inform him of the existence of an intimate video featuring him.
“At first I couldn’t believe this story, I thought it was a bluff”the 37-year-old Olympiacos midfielder (Greece) told the court. Djibril Cissé, himself a victim of similar blackmail during his career, then gave him a description of the video, of which he had received an extract on WhatsApp.
“I felt in danger, my first instinct was to file a complaint”, detailed Valbuena, who said he never had “the idea of paying”. “I was afraid for my sports career, for the France team. I knew that if the video came out, it would be complicated for me in the France team, as we saw later.”
He is then contacted directly through an intermediary of the alleged master singers, Younes Houass. But noting that he “skated” in his negotiations, in the words of the president of the tribunal, Axel Angot and Mustapha Zouaoui, the “business minds”, then turn to Karim Zenati, childhood friend of Benzema.
The police, who wiretapped the suspects, warn Valbuena that another intermediary will come into contact with him. And it is Karim Benzema who enters Valbuena’s room at the Clairefontaine training center (Yvelines) on October 6, 2015, claiming to simply help his teammate to get rid of this video problem.
The owners of the video are “big, big thugs” he warns. But luckily Benzema can introduce him to a friend, “trustworthy person”, to solve the problem. Valbuena initially interprets her teammate’s words as a simple “friendly advice”, before realizing that Benzema is linked to the instigators of this blackmail attempt.
Since this case, Valbuena has not been called up for the French football team, unlike the Real Madrid striker, who stayed away for more than five years before making a surprise return before the Euro in June. .