the times | Thursday November 25 2021 2GM 43
Wo rld
The footballer Karim Benzema has
been convicted of helping to blackmail
an international team-mate over a
sex tape.
Benzema, 33, a striker for France and
Real Madrid, was fined €75,000 yester-
day and given a one-year suspended
prison sentence for participating in an
attempt to extort money from Mathieu
Valbuena, a fellow member of the
French national team, in 2015. The sen-
tence means that he will only be jailed
if he commits another offence.
In a hearing last month, Versailles
criminal court was told that Benzema
had “behaved like a [mafia] godfather”
by putting pressure on Valbuena to pay
€25,000 being demanded by black-
mailers to suppress a sex tape that they
had found on his smartphone.
The court was told that among the
blackmailers was Karim Zenati, Benze-
ma’s childhood friend from the impov-
patient to see him. She secretly filmed
herself undergoing an examination, re-
ceiving the same diagnosis and agree-
ing to meet the doctor at a hotel.
On camera he can be heard calling
his penis a “magic flute” and the “Padre
Pio of penises”. Padre Pio was a 20th-
century friar renowned for healing. As
Miniello lay on the bed, a reporter from
the show entered the room with a
camera to challenge him, only for the
doctor to repeat his claims and phone
former patients who agreed he had
cured them.
Le Iene said it received dozens of
messages from patients revealing he
had suggested intercourse with them.
Despite widespread media coverage
and investigations now under way by
magistrates in Bari and the local guild
of doctors, Miniello has continued to
defend his methods.Doctor ‘cures’ his patients
by having sex with them
Tom Kington RomeReal Madrid star blackmailed team-mate
erished suburbs in Lyons, where he
grew up.
Zenati persuaded Benzema to inter-
vene on his behalf to convince
Valbuena to pay up, the court
was told. Benzema agreed out of
loyalty to Zenati, who was also
convicted over the blackmail
plot, the court was told.
At an international get-
together before a match
against Armenia in Octo-
ber 2015, Benzema told his
team-mate that he had a
“solution” to ensure
that the sex tape was
not made public
and advised him
to talk to Zenati,- Instead, Valbuena, 37,
who now plays for Olym-
piakos in Greece, contacted police to
denounce the blackmail plot.
Ségolène Marès, the state prosecutor,
said: “Benzema is not a good Samaritan
who just wanted to help out. He did not
put a knife to [Valbuena’s] throat but he
put pressure on him to make the
right choice.”
When the scandal broke in
2015, Benzema was barred
from playing for France
but returned this year.
French Football Federa-
tion officials said this
month that he would
keep his place in the team
even if convicted. His law-
yers said he would appeal
against the verdict. They
claimed the case was driven
by Valbuena’s “jealousy” at
having lost his place in the
France team and seen his
career go into decline after the
scandal.Adam Sage Paris
A gynaecologist has been “curing”
female patients by convincing them
that they needed to have sex with him.
Giovanni Miniello, 68, from the
southern Italian city of Bari, referred to
his penis as a “magic flute” that he
claimed could cure women suffering
from the human papillomavirus (HPV)
infection, a cause of cervical cancer.
One of his patients took her story to
Le Iene, a TV show. She claimed
Miniello had examined her and report-
ed traces of HPV, even though tests had
been negative. He allegedly told her not
to trust the tests. He then said she could
get rid of the infection by having sex
with a vaccinated person, such as him-
self, and proposed to “decontaminate”
her, she said.
Le Iene sent a woman posing as aKarim Benzema will
not be barred from
playing for FranceStefano Bisi insisted that the inquiry
into his lodge was a witch-hunt
When magistrates announced the
results of an operation against the
’Ndrangheta mafia involving 100 ar-
rests and multimillion-euro property
seizures, one detail went unnoticed.
Police reported that packets of
cocaine smuggled in by the Molés, one
of the mobster clans, were stamped
with a logo of an eye and a compass —
the symbol of the freemasons.
The symbols, along with the Greek
letters Alpha and Omega — also
associated with masons — showed up
on packets seized from couriers.
For some it was a suggestion that
alleged ties between the masons and
the Calabrian mob were thriving,
reviving decades-old charges
that crime bosses joined
masonic lodges to cut
deals with politicians,
civil servants and
entrepreneurs. Ma-
sons insist, however,
that a court ruling in
Rome this month
proved that the
accusations were
exaggerated.
In 2017, Stefano Bisi, a
journalist and grand
master of the Grande Orien-
te d’Italia, the country’s biggest
lodge, said that an investigation in the
1990s into ties with the mafia was a
“witch-hunt”. The investigating magis-
trate lodged a defamation lawsuit
against him. A judge dismissed the case,
ordering the magistrate to pay costs.
“This ruling shows it really was a
witch-hunt,” Bisi said. “The Grande
Oriente is not the ’Ndrangheta, it is not
the mafia.” What hurt, he added, was
that the investigation, which was later
shelved with no charges brought,
Investigators
fear mafia has
forged new ties
with masons
prompted the United Grand Lodge of
England to withdraw its recognition of
the Grande Oriente.
Bisi said that the withdrawal was an
unfair blow to his lodge’s credibility.
The question remains, however,
whether the drug-trafficking ’Ndrang-
heta, believed to be worth €40 billion,
has hooks in the freemasons or whe-
ther its bosses simply mimic the lodges.
A parliamentary commission or-
dered an inspection of lodges’ lists in
2017 and reported that 193 former and
present members and applicants in
Sicily and Calabria had mob links.
The masons dissolved several local
lodges in Calabria after mobsters were
found among their members.
Giovanni Zumbo was a member of
the Araba Fenice lodge. Zumbo, an ac-
countant, managed properties
seized from the mafia by the
courts. He was convicted
of mafia crimes after
police learnt that he
had tipped off a boss
about pending ar-
rests. It was suspect-
ed that he learnt of
the arrests through a
fellow mason, a
senior police officer.
The commission wrote:
“Zumbo is emblematic of
how the masonry can be the
lynchpin between the ’Ndrang-
heta and the state.”
Among the accused at the trial of 355
mafia suspects in Lamezia Terme, Ca-
labria, is Giancarlo Pittelli, a mason and
former MP with Silvio Berlusconi’s For-
za Italia party. He denies allegations
that he worked for the Mancuso clan.
Links between the mobsters and the
masons were dismissed by Antonio
Nicaso, a mafia expert who said that he
would not read too much into the
symbols found on cocaine packets. He
said: “They have used all kinds of
symbols representing Ferrari, animals,
stars, even Google.”Archbishop’s
‘affair’ leaves
flock in shock
France
Charles Bremner Paris
The Catholic Archbishop of Paris is
being investigated by the Vatican over
claims that he had an intimate relation-
ship with a woman, French media have
reported.
Michel Aupetit, 70, whose tough
management style has prompted sub-
ordinates to resign, has admitted
“ambiguous conduct” with a woman.
He said that he reported it to the church
but denied any sexual relationship.
The French Catholic church has de-
clined to confirm or deny an inquiry,
reported by Le Point news magazine.
Discovery of the alleged relationship
last year is said to have caused a crisis
over leadership in the Paris arch-
diocese. For the past year the arch-
bishop, appointed in 2017, has kept a lowprofile under the threat of his relation-
ship being disclosed, Le Point said.
Experts said the claim that Aupetit
breached his vow of celibacy was dam-
aging to the French church a month
after it acknowledged that for decades
it had tolerated and covered up sys-
temic sexual abuse of boys by priests.
“The fact that this involves the head
of one of the most powerful dioceses in
France can only cause concern,” Phil-
ippe Portier, an academic church spe-
cialist, told the magazine. The issue of
priestly chastity was once again under
the spotlight, he added. “Many priests
lead double or parallel lives.”
Le Point said that colleagues became
aware of Aupetit’s former relationship
from an old email he mistakenly sent to
his secretary in 2012.
The archbishop, a former medical
doctor who entered the priesthood at
38, confirmed a relationship but said he
did not write the email.
He told Le Point: “When I was vicar-
general, a woman was in contact with
me many times... I sometimes had to
take measures to put some distance
between us. I nevertheless recognise
that my behaviour with her may have
been ambiguous.”Bridling at the competition Wild stallions fight along Salt River in the Tonto
National Forest, Arizona. There are fewer than 500 of them left in the stateItaly
Tom Kington Rome
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