Karim Benzema Could Face Trial Over Sex-Tape Scandal

Real Madrid‘s Karim Benzema is not a free man yet as his alleged “active role” in a sex-tape involving his former teammate in the French national team, Matthieu Valbuena, in 2015, could be revisited anytime soon.

A prosecutor in France has insisted that the case has to return to trial and Karim Benzema‘s lawyer, Sylvain Cormier, confirmed that the state prosecutors are very interested in the case. He, however, added that the allegation is baseless.

“It’s no surprise at all,” Cormier said. “The State Prosecutor has been really involved in this matter, that’s clear, and we were expecting a trial to be requested, although the accusations are not based in reality.”

The sex tape saga started in 2015, a few months to the European championship hosted by France in 2016. Matthieu Valbuena received a call from blackmailers urging him to pay a certain amount of money or they would release his sex-tape to the public.

As the threats from the blackmailers were brewing, Karim Benzema allegedly continued to bring up the matter whenever he was in the presence of Matthieu Valbuena during national team duties. Matthieu alleged that Benzema indirectly urged him to pay the blackmailers and sounded like he had something to do with them.

While Benzema insisted that he had nothing to do with the sex-tape nor with the blackmailers, the Real Madrid forward stressed that he never urged Matthieu to pay the asking price of the criminals.

The saga dragged until France national team coach, Didier Deschamps dropped Benzema and Matthieu from the national team and never brought them back to the team until date. They even missed out of France’s victory at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

In July 2017, the Real Madrid star made huge progress in court when the appeal court ruled that the role of the police in the saga was wrong and hence, the case was dropped. But the state prosecutors clarified that it was not the blackmail case that was dropped but the role of the police in the case.

The role of the police which the court did not like was that an undercover policeman who disguised as Luke served as an intermediary between the blackmailers and Matthieu. Benzema‘s lawyers were able to prove that the police officer pushed the two parties to make demands. Hence, if the police officer was not involved, the blackmail wouldn’t have taken place.

In December 2019, Benzema‘s lawyers tried to bury the case once and for all by urging the Appeal court in France to strike out the case in its entirety but the Appeal Court ruled against Benzema’s lawyers.

As at the time of publishing this report, the date when the trial would commence has not been known and Real Madrid, the club of the 32-year-old striker has insisted that they have nothing to do with the case.

In the other hand, Matthieu who is now 35-year-old and still plays for Greek club Olympiacos as an attacking midfielder seemed determined to see through the case to a logical end.