Orgy claims haunt Strauss- Kahn
Former IMF chief detained on suspicion of ‘ abetting’ pimping
LILLE, France — French police detained former IMF chief Dominique Strauss- Kahn for questioning Tuesday over allegations he took part in orgies in Paris and Washington with prostitutes paid for by businessmen.
The 62- year- old former Socialist minister, who until last year was the front- runner to replace Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France, turned up voluntarily at a police station in the northern city of Lille. Prosecutors said he would be detained on suspicion of “abetting aggravated pimping by an organized gang” and “misuse of company funds.”
Paying a prostitute is not illegal in France, but profiting from vice or embezzling company funds to pay for sex can lead to charges. To support such charges against StraussKahn, prosecutors would have to make a charge of pimping against the businessmen stick, or a charge that they misused their company’s money to organize the orgy parties. The companies in question have already told prosecutors they had no idea their funds were being used for the parties.
An investigating magistrate will decide whether the evidence supports charges on these or other potential offences. French law allows detention of individuals being formally questioned in connection with a possible crime and between interrogations, the millionaire international statesman was to be held in a spartan 7.5- square- metre cell with a simple foam mattress, a sink and a hole- in- the- floor squat toilet.
Investigating magistrates want to know whether he was aware that the women who entertained him at parties in restaurants, hotels and swingers’ clubs in Washington, Paris and several other European capitals were paid prostitutes. They will also seek to determine whether Strauss- Kahn knew that the escorts were paid with funds fraudulently obtained by his hosts from a French public works company, for which one of them worked as a senior executive.
Strauss- Kahn lawyer Henri Leclerc has said his client may not have known he was with prostitutes as “in these parties, you’re not necessarily dressed. I defy you to tell the difference between a nude prostitute and a nude woman of quality.”
Strauss- Kahn admits he has an uninhibited sex life, but denies any role in pimping or corruption.
Two businessmen, Fabrice Paszkowski, a medical equipment tycoon with ties to Strauss- Kahn’s Socialist Party, and David Roquet, former director of a local subsidiary of building giant BTP Eiffage, have been charged. The pair have alleged links to a network of French and Belgian prostitutes centred on the Carlton Hotel in Lille, a well- known meeting place of the local business and political elite in a city run by the Socialist Party.
The last of the sex parties is said to have taken place during a trip to Washington and the IMF headquarters between May 11 and 13 last year by Paszkowski and Roquet, in part to discuss Strauss- Kahn’s presidential bid.
One day later, on May 14, Strauss- Kahn’s career fell apart when he was arrested in New York following allegations that he had subjected chambermaid Nafissatou Diallo to a brutal sexual assault in his hotel suite. The case against him eventually collapsed when prosecutors began to doubt Diallo’s credibility as a witness, and StraussKahn returned home to France to face further investigation and scandal.
The involvement of businessmen and police officers raised suspicions they intended to curry favour with a presidential contender by procuring women for him, but they are reported to have denied this during questioning.