French prosecutors said on Thursday they were seeking a 10-month suspended sentence for alleged complicity in attempting to blackmail former France teammate Mathieu Valbuena with a sex tape for Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema.
Benzema is one of five people on trial for the 2015 attempted extortion, which led to his removal from the national team for five and a half years.
The 33-year-old, who scored for Real in Tuesday’s Champions League match in Ukraine, is missing the proceedings at Versailles outside Paris.
He denied the allegations, saying he tried to help Valbuena out of the situation, not implicate him.
“Benzema is not a Good Samaritan who tried to help. He worked to allow negotiators to reach their targets and blackmailers to receive money,” prosecutor Segoline Mars told the court. He also asked the court to impose a fine of 75,000 euros.
Earlier this year Benzema made a successful return to the national line-up for the European Championships, but Valbuena, who had also lost his Les Blaes place in the affair, was never selected again.
Testifying on the first day of the trial on Wednesday, Valbuena said the affair had left him feeling “scared” and fearful for his career.
“I knew things would be difficult for me in the French team if the video surfaced, as it was later proved.”
Mustafa Zouai, the alleged mastermind of the blackmail attempt, expressed regret on Thursday.
“I apologize from the bottom of my heart,” he told the midfielder, who plays on the court with Greek club Olympiakos.
‘Holy Grail’
Valbuena said that being selected for the national team was the “Holy Grail for footballers” and that he “never imagined” that a teammate was being implicated in a conspiracy against him.
Benzema claims he was only trying to help his teammate when he approached her about a sex tape at the French team’s training center in October 2015 and told him that he “managed” the issue of the video. Might help him find someone to do it.
He also warned Valbuena that he was dealing with “very, very heavy criminals”.
Valbuena, 37, told the court that Benzema was “very stubborn” during the conversation.
He said that when the money was not discussed it was clear that Benzema was not suggesting pay “in football tickets”.
Prosecutors point to a phone-taped conversation in which Benzema told a friend who worked as a middleman for suspected blackmailers “he’s not taking us seriously” as evidence that Benzema forcibly Was an aide in the recovery effort.
Benzema’s lawyer claimed on Wednesday that the case was motivated by “jealousy” of Valbuena, his more successful former international team-mate.
Lawyer Sylvain Cormier told reporters outside the courtroom, “Their reasoning is simple: ‘I, I have been sidelined (from the team) and never brought back and denied a game case, while Karim Benzema is who are soaring high in global football.”
He has made some impressive appearances since returning to the French team, giving him a newfound popularity with French fans.
France coach Didier Deschamps said this month that “he is no longer the same person, he has matured”.
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