As he approaches the summits with Real Madrid, Karim Benzema is more than ever under threat of a trial in the matter of the sextape of Mathieu Valbuena. On June 29, the Versailles public prosecutor's office (Yvelines) delivered its indictment and requested that the attacker be sent back to the criminal court for complicity in the blackmail attempt. Four other people are the subject of dismissal requisitions for attempted blackmail. Since the outbreak of this case, the Madrid striker is banned from the French team.
A call to Clairefontaine. On June 3, 2015, Mathieu Valbuena received many hidden calls while he was on an internship with the France team at Clairefontaine. He picked up on the sixth attempt. At the other end of the line, his interlocutor talks to him about a sextape in which he appears and suggests that he “settle”. The midfielder of the Blues is not very surprised since a month earlier, Djibril Cisse, himself a victim of such a mishap in the past, told him of the existence of this intimate video.
Five days later, Mathieu Valbuena lodged a complaint. The boss of the brigade of repression of banditry of the PJ of Versailles takes the matter in hand and decides to pretend to be an intermediary, under the name of Luka. The police repeatedly raised the author of the pressure stroke. The organization of an appointment at Algiers airport to resolve the problem is mentioned but will never take place. The threat of broadcasting the video to the media is raised.
Too pushy an investigator? The role of "Luka" was at the heart of a long legal battle. According to several defense lawyers, the police officer, by his calls, overstepped his role in causing the offense, which is prohibited. First, in 2017, the Court of Cassation ruled in the indictments by considering that the process used was likely to vitiate the search for evidence. But, in December 2019, change of course: the Court of Cassation, in plenary session this time, considered that “the stratagem employed by an agent of the public authority for the finding of an offense does not in itself constitute an attack on the principle of fairness of evidence ”. The procedure was therefore able to be completed.
The blackmailer identified. Thanks to telephone operations, the mysterious interlocutor of Mathieu Valbuena is identified very quickly. This is a certain Younes Houass, former driver of an OM player domiciled in the Oise. For the prosecution, this 36-year-old man with a clean locker is "the blackmailer". “My client always explained that he never wanted to blackmail Mathieu Valbuena, disputes his lawyer, Me Marion Ménage, who intends to plead for release. He claims to have contacted him to warn him and tell him to be careful. The wiretapping goes in this direction. For the prosecution, however, the objective was clearly to obtain money.
At the start, a video theft. The investigations made it possible to go back and retrace the course of the intimate video of Mathieu Valbuena. She was extracted from her phone by one of her relatives, Axel Angot, an IT pro who acts as a luxury concierge for professional soccer players. The latter admitted having recovered the file in July 2014 when the player asked him to transfer the data from his mobile phone to a new device.
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He admits having had the idea of using it to settle a debt while explaining that he did not wish to blackmail Mathieu Valbuena. He nevertheless admitted to having asked his friend Mustapha Zouaoui for help. This Marseillais, nicknamed "Sata", also gravitates in the world of professional football. "Mustapha Zouaoui appears in telephone tapping as the conductor of this operation," notes the indictment. This 46-year-old man denies having played such a role. It is in any case him who ties up with Younes Houass to fish Mathieu Valbuena.
Karim Benzema's arrival. Younes Houass's efforts in the summer of 2015 are in vain. In October, Axel Angot and Mustapha Zouaoui then decided to activate a second channel, the Benzema track, to put pressure on Mathieu Valbuena. To do this, they establish ties with Madrid's oldest friend, Karim Zenati. On October 6, when the French team is assembled for a friendly match, Karim Benzema requests to see his teammate. The Real striker tells him about the video and tells him that he can introduce him to someone - Karim Zenati - who can make things right. He reminds him in passing that Djibril Cisse, faced with the same situation, agreed to pay and that the video never came out.
In the process, Karim Benzema and his childhood friend talk on the phone without knowing that they are tapped. The Madrid star seems annoyed. "He's going to give up on nothing ... He doesn't take us seriously," he says. Arrested in November 2015 and then indicted in stride, the striker always explained to have intervened in a friendly way with his teammate at the Blues. A justification "very little credible", tackles the prosecution. Karim Benzema “comes at the very end, as a last chance to bring blackmail to fruition. He cannot seriously maintain, on reading the transcripts of the wiretapping, that he has deployed as many arguments of conviction and tried to put Mathieu Valbuena and Karim Zenati in touch by simple friendship, moreover very hypothetical, ”snaps the indictment. . However, Djibril Cisse, indicted late, benefits from requisition of dismissal
"I have the impression that we are using this file from the start in order to reach my client," says Sylvain Cormier, lawyer for Karim Benzema. From the outset, the prosecutions in this case have been unjustified and artificial. The prosecutor's thesis is an intellectual construction. The counsel for Mathieu Valbuena, Me Paul-Albert Iweins, for his part welcomed a indictment in which "the responsibilities are established". It is now up to the investigating judge to rule with a view to the possible referral of those under investigation before the criminal court.
