Karim Benzema: French sex tape blackmail case trial starts

REAL Madrid striker Karim Benzema has gone on trial in France accused of complicity in an attempt to blackmail fellow footballer Mathieu Valbuena over a sex tape found on his phone.

He has ridiculed the charge against him as a “masquerade” and did not appear at the court in Versailles.

The case dates back to June 2015, when the two footballers were at a France training camp.

The saga rocked French football and both players lost their team places.

Karim Benzema, 33, has since returned to the France team and scored in Real Madrid’s victory in Kyiv on Tuesday in the Uefa Champions League. His lawyer put his absence down to “professional” reasons.

He is on trial with four other men accused of trying to blackmail Mr Valbuena, who told the court on Wednesday that football was his life. “I knew if that video got out it would make things difficult with the French team,” he said. The sex tape case began in 2015 when Mr Valbuena, now 37, asked a man in Marseille, Axel Angot, to upload the contents of his mobile phone to a new device. – bbc.com