On November 24, the court sentenced Karim Benzema to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 75,000 euros for complicity in attempted blackmail against his former teammate in the France team, Mathieu Valbuena.
Regarding the civil action, the five defendants had been ordered to pay jointly the sum of 150,000 euros to Mathieu Valbuena, in compensation for moral damage. A conviction accompanied by a provisional execution.
In addition, the star striker of Real Madrid and the Blues, was ordered to reimburse 80,000 euros in legal costs to the civil party.
Karim Benzema and his lawyer Antoine Vey appealed against this conviction.
As he did not pay the 230,000 euros requested by Mathieu Valbuena under the civil action, the defense of the latter had this sum seized via a bailiff from a French bank account of Karim Benzema on Friday January 21.
This caused a partial blocking of this account, said a source familiar with the matter.
The defense of Karim Benzema had asked to place this sum of 230,000 euros in sequestration pending the appeal trial.
“These are logical consequences of the immediate payment decision. We asked for an amicable payment which never happened, so we went to the next step”, reacted to AFP Me Paul- Albert Iweins, adviser to Mathieu Valbuena.
At the end of his client’s conviction, Me Cormier, one of Karim Benzema’s lawyers, expressed his “anger”, saying he was “stunned” by a “very severe, unjust and unproven sentence”.
In his judgment, the president of the 7th chamber of the Versailles criminal court had estimated that Karim Benzema, who was absent from the proceedings, had “personally involved, at the cost of subterfuge and lies, to convince his teammate to submit to the blackmail”.
