Karim Benzema -
Pressinphoto / Shutterstock / SIPA
Karim Benzema will be tried from October 20 to 22 before the court of Versailles, the prosecution announced on Tuesday.
The Real Madrid striker is being prosecuted for complicity in attempted blackmail in the so-called sextape affair of his former teammate in the France team, Mathieu Valbuena.
Benzema faces up to five years imprisonment and a 75,000 euros fine in this case, where four other men are being prosecuted for attempted blackmail.
One of them is also being prosecuted for breach of trust.
A 2015 discussion at the heart of the matter
Karim Benzema is accused of having incited Mathieu Valbuena, 36 and currently under contract with the Greek club Olympiakos, to pay blackmailers who threatened to unveil an intimate video featuring him.
The case is based in particular on a discussion in October 2015 between the two men at Clairefontaine, the training center of the French football team, during which Karim Benzema allegedly explained that he could "present someone of confidence" to Mathieu Valbuena, according to the hearing of the latter, to help him "manage" the possible publication of this compromising video.
Friendly advice or tort pressure?
"Attention Math, they are big, big thugs", would have warned the Madrid player.
A way of “helping” his teammate later explained Karim Benzema, while Mathieu Valbuena confessed to having “the impression of being taken for an idiot”.
It will be for justice to determine if this exchange is friendly advice or tortious pressure.
Former French international Djibril Cissé, for a time implicated in this affair, was dismissed in January.
When Karim Benzena was referred to the Versailles Criminal Court in January, his lawyer Sylvain Cormier had denounced a "relentlessness" and "a decision as absurd as predictable".
Sport
Case of the sextape: Returned to correctional, Karim Benzema evokes a "masquerade"
Mathieu valbuena
Sport
Karim Benzema
real Madrid
Sextape