French footballer Benzema guilty in sex tape blackmail case
Court had awarded one-year jail term and a fine of $84,000 to the footballer.
Karim Benzema, the French and Real Madrid striker has found guilty of conspiring with a sex tape to blackmail his fellow French footballer.
The footballer has been awarded one-year jail term and a fine of $84,000 by a judge.
The 33-year-old footballer was among five persons tried last month for an attempt to extort Mathieu Valbuena. The football community in France is stunned by the scandal as both Karim Benzema and Mathieu Valbuena lost place in the national team.
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According to the prosecutors, Benzema in June 2015 had put pressure on Valbuena to pay off the blackmailers, whom the 33-year-old footballer had conspired with.
He has always dismissed the charges and said that he was just trying to help fellow footballer get rid of the compromising video.
Benzema and Valbuena were not present in court in Versailles for the verdict yesterday.
Four co-defendants of Benzema were also found guilty on Wednesday and were handed jail sentences upto two-and-a-half years in prison.
The lawyers of Benzema said they would challenge the conviction of the footballer.
His lawyer Sylvain Cormier said that the reaction is an angry one to the court judgment.
The judge, while delivering the verdict observed that Karim Benzema had implicated himself personally, through lies and subterfuge to convince Mathieu Valbuena to submit to the blackmail.
