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VERSAILLES − Former France international, Mathieu Valbuena, told a court yesterday he “felt in danger” after being targeted in a blackmail attempt involving a sex tape over which his former teammate, Real Madrid striker, Karim Benzema, has gone on trial.
French striker, Karim, is accused of complicity in an attempt to extort money from Mathieu over a video that was copied from his smartphone in 2015.
Karim denies the allegations.
The affair rocked the French national team and led to the 33-year-old Madrid star being cast out of the side for five-and-a-half years before making a surprise comeback this year.
Mathieu, who was also excluded from the team over the row, told the court at the start of the trial yesterday that he feared for his career when he realised he was being blackmailed.
Karim, who scored the fifth and final goal to take Real Madrid to a 5-0 win over Shakhtar Donetsk in the group stage of the Champions League in Kiev on Tuesday night, did not attend the proceedings in the Paris suburb of Versailles.
If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and a fine of €70,000 (RM338,969).
Four other people, including the two alleged masterminds of the blackmail attempt, are being tried alongside him.
The murky affair began when Mathieu, 37, handed his smartphone to Axel Angot, a man connected to footballing circles in the southern port city of Marseille where Mathieu had previously played, with a request to transfer its contents to a new device.
Axel, now on trial for breach of trust, came across sexually-explicit footage on the phone involving Mathieu.
Prosecutors say he then explored ways − together with a friend, Mustapha Zouaoui − to approach Mathieu and threaten publication of the footage unless he paid them.
Mathieu received several calls in June 2015 warning of the potential exposure of the footage, which he reported to police.
What followed was an imbroglio involving several shadowy middlemen, one of whom turned out to be an undercover agent called “Luka” placed by police, who were trying to get proof before taking action against the protagonists.
Mathieu told the court he learned about the video from former teammate, Djibril Cisse, who contacted him in May 2015 to tell him that compromising footage of him had emerged.
“Initially, I didn’t believe it, I thought they were bluffing,” said the midfielder, who plays for Greek club Olympiakos.
He said Djibril, who had himself previously been the victim of a similar blackmail attempt, then described to him the contents of the video, an extract of which Djibril had received via WhatsApp.
“I felt in danger, my first reflex was to file a criminal complaint,” said Mathieu.
The former Marseille player, who agreed to work with an undercover police officer on the affair, said he also feared for his place in the national side.
“I knew if the video came out things would be difficult for me in the French team, as was proven to be the case later.”
After Djibril’s tip-off, Mathieu received a call from a first man accused of acting as a middleman, Younes Houass.
Younes, who is charged in the case, told the court he did not discuss money with Mathieu.
He said the player “did not seem to understand” the gravity of his predicament and that he advised him to seek advice from someone he could trust, earning himself a reprimand from the presiding judge, who ordered him to “stop trying to make out you’re Mother Theresa”.
With Younes struggling to make headway, Axel and Mustapha then turned to one of Karim Benzema’s old friends, Karim Zenati, who prosecutors say then enlisted Karim Benzema’s help.
On October 6, 2015, Karim Benzema went to see Mathieu in his room at the French national team’s training centre at Clairefontaine, west of Paris.
He told his teammate that he could introduce him to a “trustworthy person” to help him “manage” the possible publication of a compromising video.
In what Karim later claimed was an attempt to help his teammate out of a difficult situation, he told him: “Be careful, ‘Math’, these are very, very heavy criminals.”
Karim Benzema then called his childhood friend, Karim Zenati, who was by then acting as an intermediary for the alleged blackmailers, and told him in a conversation wiretapped by police: “He’s not taking us seriously.”
Prosecutors say that the word “us” proves that Karim Benzema saw himself as part of the blackmail scheme.
Mathieu said later that the conversation left him with the feeling that he was “being played for a fool”.
“If he doesn’t want us to handle this for him, he’ll have to deal with the piranhas,” Karim Zenati said, claiming later that all he wanted to do was alert Mathieu to the existence of the video.
Karim Benzema replied that “they will piss on him”, and in a subsequent conversation referred to Mathieu with a derogatory term for a homosexual, which he said later was meant “in a friendly way”.
In court yesterday, Karim Zenati insisted that he never wanted to involve Karim Benzema in a blackmail plot.
Karim Benzema argues that the undercover police officer used dishonest methods to draw him into the affair.
He complained bitterly about being dropped from the national team, accusing France coach, Didier Deschamps, of a “racist” decision linked to his north African origins.
Since returning to the squad for this year’s European Championship, Karim has put in some impressive performances, which have given him a newfound popularity with French fans.
Didier said this month that “he’s no longer the same person, he’s matured”.
While Karim was rehabilitated, Mathieu was never again selected for the national team.
Speaking outside the courthouse, Mustapha told reporters: “What I regret is that poor Mathieu also deserved to go to the World Cup (in 2018, which Karim missed) and to be honest, because of us, he didn’t get to go.” – AFP, October 21, 2021
