VERSAILLES: The trial in France football's famous sex tape and blackmail case has started with Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema accused of complicity in the attempt to blackmail former teammate Mathieu Valbuena.
Though Benzema has denied his involvement in the case in which some people tried to blackmail Valbuena after finding some sexually explicit video on his mobile phone, he is charged with intervening on behalf of the main accused. Benzema, who lost his place in the France national team along with Valbuena when the scandal broke out in 2015.
The trial started on Tuesday, the day Benzema was in Ukraine playing for Real Madrid against Shatkar Donetsk at Kyiv. Benzema is on trial with four other men accused of trying to blackmail Valbuena, who told the court on Wednesday that football was his life and it would have been ruined if the video.
On Wednesday, Valbuena told his side of the story about the scandal that started when asked a man in Marseille, Axel Angot, to transfer the content of his mobile phone to another device.
Angot found sexually explicit material on the phone, and he and another defendant in the trial, Mustapha Zouaoui, are then accused of trying to blackmail Valbuena by threatening to make the tape public.
According to a report in BBC, Zouaoui told reporters he had shared the tape, but there had never been an attempt to extort money. IANS
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