Real Madrid footballer Karim Benzema has dropped an appeal against a one-year suspended sentence for complicity in a bid to blackmail former France teammate Mathieu Valbuena with a sex tape, his lawyer said on Saturday. 

Benzema was sentenced in November 2021 and fined 75,000 euros ($82,000) over the 2015 extortion attempt that shocked French football and saw him exiled from the French national team for five-and-a-half years.