French bailiffs have seized 230,000 euros ($260,000) from Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema over his conviction last year for complicity in a bid to blackmail former France team-mate Mathieu Valbuena with a sex tape, a source familiar with the case said Thursday.
A court ordered Benzema in November to pay a fine, damages and legal costs for pressuring Val-buena to pay off his blackmailers, as well as handing him a one-year suspended jail sentence.
Benzema “implicated himself personally, through subterfuge and lies, to convince his team-mate to submit to the blackmail”, the court in Paris suburb Versailles said at the time.
Benzema has appealed the ruling, which came in the same year he made a stunning return to France’s national squad after being dropped in 2015 over the blackmail allegations.—AFP
