Benzema will be tried on appeal on June 30 for his conviction for blackmail

Real Madrid’s French striker Karim Benzema will be tried on June 30 on appeal after being sentenced in the first instance to one year in prison exempt from compliance for complicity in the blackmail that friends of his made to his former teammate Mathieu Valbuena.

The new process, which as the previous one will take place in Versailles, on the outskirts of Paris, it is planned for two days, judicial sources indicated.

The player’s lawyers did not confirm for now if Benzema will attend this time to defend himself, after in the first instance he did not do so alleging professional reasons, an attitude highly criticized by the court.

So, the hearing took place in the middle of the season, a few days after a Champions League match and before a Clasico against Barcelona.

On the new dates, the season with Madrid will already be over and Benzema will not have any commitments with his national team either, since the World Cup will take place months later in Qatar.

At the end of the first instance trial, his lawyers assured that the player would do everything possible to defend himself on appeal.

The Madrid striker, who this weekend became the top scorer in the history of French football, He was sentenced to one year in prison exempt from compliance and a fine of 75,000 euros for having incited Valbuena to pay the blackmailers in 2015 that they had obtained a video of sexual content from the then Lyon footballer.

A winger that the Madrid player has always denied34, who assures that he acted with good will.

He did so after a childhood friend, Karim Zenati, requested it at the request of the blackmailers, who received harsher penalties in the first instance.

But the court revealed that the striker did not show any compassion for Valbuena, as the tapped telephone conversations revealed by the police with Zenati, who ruined his version. EFE