Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger must be extremely happy that he could not convince Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema to move to the Emirates last summer after the French star has been charged with ‘complicity in an attempt to blackmail’ and conspiring to commit a criminal act, which if found guilty carries a sentence of not less than five years in prison.
At the moment Benzema has been placed under judicial supervision, which means he cannot meet with or talk to anyone else involved in the case, and while this does not prove wrong doing, it does mean that investigators consider him to be a part of their on-going case.
The 27-year-old striker does not deny his involvement and claims that he too was the victim of blackmail in the Valbuena sex tape scandal.
The allegation is that Valbuena was asked for money in order for the tape not to be published and that Benzema spoke to the midfielder about the tape during a French national team training session at Clairefontaine in early October.
The prosecutor’s office has a recorded telephone conversation in which Benzema is heard saying: “Do not worry. He has no choice. I’ll make him understand. He’ll pay.”
This all comes as Benzema is also being linked to a huge drug trafficking case called the “Air Cocaine Scandal” in which a person linked with the French striker received paid flights to the Dominican Republic and Ecuador returning to France with drugs worth millions of Euros.
Now even if Benzema is found to be an innocent bystander in all of this, his reputation will have suffered such a blow that any future transfer away from Real Madrid sounds almost impossible.
