Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Updated: Feb. 22, 2012
Dominique Strauss-Kahn was the director of the International Monetary
Fund and a likely candidate for the presidency of France. On May 14,
2011 he was arrested on a plane at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport
and charged with sexually assaulting a hotel chambermaid,
Nafissatou Diallo.
He resigned from his I.M.F. post and pleaded not guilty. The case was
dismissed in August after prosecutors developed doubts about the maid’s
credibility, although forensic evidence showed that a sexual encounter
had taken place.
A month later, during a televised interview,
Mr. Strauss-Kahn stated that his sexual encounter with Ms. Diallo was
“an error” and “a moral failure” he would regret his whole life, but not
a criminal act. Mr. Strauss-Kahn also stated that he had wanted to run
for the French presidency and had missed his “appointment with the
French people” because of his own actions.
He returned to France in early September but still faces a civil lawsuit in the United States brought by the hotel maid.
Every step of the case created shock waves on both sides of the
Atlantic, from the first news that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had been removed
from a plane and handcuffed. On May 19, a Manhattan judge granted him $1
million cash bail, which allowed him to stay under house arrest in a
Manhattan apartment while his case was pending. He was required to wear
an ankle monitor and remained under 24-hour home confinement, with an
armed guard posted outside. At the hearing, his lawyers suggested that
any sexual encounter was consensual, and he
pleaded not guilty. The same day a Manhattan grand jury
indicted Mr. Strauss-Kahn on charges that included several first-degree felony counts,
including committing a criminal sex act, attempted rape and sexual
abuse. Prosecutors said that after locking the maid, Ms. Diallo, in his
room he tried to rape her and forced her to perform oral sex.
Test results showed that DNA evidence from the maid’s workclothes matched samples taken from Mr. Strauss-Kahn.
In October 2011,
prosecutors in France dropped an investigation
into a complaint of attempted rape made against him by a novelist,
Tristane Banon, for an encounter that took place in 2003. Although Mr.
Strauss-Kahn admitted to what prosecutors said amounted to sexual
assault — trying to kiss Ms. Banon without her consent — but said the
case could not be pursued because of the statute of limitations
Detained in Northern France
In February 2012, Mr. Strauss-Kahn was detained by police officials
in the northern French city of Lille for two days of questioning in
connection with
an investigation into an prostitution ring accused of operating in
France and Belgium.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn presented himself voluntarily to the Lille
investigators, who wanted to question him about accusations of
complicity in activities related to prostitution in Paris and
Washington, where two businessmen are accused of paying for orgies in
2010 and 2011.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn was held overnight in a detention cell and was released on Feb. 22. A source close to the investigation said that
he would be summoned again in March.
French law allows a person to be detained for questioning without charge for 24 hours, with a possible extension to 48 hours.
While prostitution is legal in France, the investigating magistrates
were trying to determine whether the women were paid with funds the men
might have embezzled. The magistrates were attempting to discover
whether Mr. Strauss-Kahn knew of any such payments.
Eight people have been charged in the case, including a prominent
lawyer, a local police official in Lille and three executives of the
Hotel Carlton.
A lawyer for Mr. Strauss-Kahn appeared to confirm that he had
attended the events, saying that his client would not have been aware if
the women who entertained him were prostitutes.
More Background on the New York Case
At the end of June 2011, law enforcement officials said investigators
had uncovered major holes in the credibility of the hotel chambermaid, Nafissatou Diallo.
Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual
encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn and Ms. Diallo, prosecutors no longer
believed much of what she had told them about the circumstances or
about herself.
Since her initial allegation on May 14, Ms. Diallo had repeatedly
lied, officials said. Within a day of the incident, she was recorded
discussing the possible benefits of the case with an incarcerated man
who was part of a group that had deposited about $100,000 in bank
accounts controlled by the accuser.
On July 1, Mr. Strauss-Kahn
was released on his own recognizance after
a hearing in State Supreme Court in Manhattan in which prosecutors
acknowledged weaknesses in the case. The news set off a furor in France,
where speculation began over whether his political career would be
revived.
In late July, Ms. Diallo
appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America,
in a tearful interview, urging the prosecution to go forward and
defending her account. The appearance came a day after the publication
of
an interview with Newsweek magazine and seemed to be part of a strategy intended to put pressure on the Manhattan district attorney,
Cyrus R. Vance Jr., to prosecute the case.
In both accounts, Ms. Diallo said that when she entered the
28th-floor hotel suite, intending to clean, she apologized when she
happened upon Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who was naked. Much of her account
tracked news reports about what she told the authorities. Some details
were new, like her account of their dialogue and her movements
immediately after the attack. But they were also contradictory: She
later told counselors at the hospital, for example, that Mr.
Strauss-Kahn had not spoken at all.
Civil Lawsuit
With the criminal case still unresolved, Ms. Diallo
filed a civil suit against Mr. Strauss-Kahn
on Aug. 8 in State Supreme Court in the Bronx, seeking unspecified
damages for a “violent and sadistic attack” that humiliated and degraded
her and robbed her “of her dignity as a woman.” The timing of the
lawsuit was unusual for cases that involve criminal prosecutions;
typically, accusers wait until a criminal matter is resolved before
proceeding with a civil action, which can interfere with a pending
criminal case.
Ms. Diallo’s lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson, indicated in court papers
that he was prepared to introduce testimony from other women who say
they were attacked by Mr. Strauss-Kahn in “hotel rooms around the
world,” and in apartments specifically used by him “for the purpose of
covering up his crimes.”
Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said in a statement that they had always
maintained that the motivation of Mr. Thompson and his client was to
make money. “The filing of this lawsuit ends any doubt on that
question,” the statement said. “The civil suit has no merit and Mr.
Strauss-Kahn will defend it vigorously.”
Criminal Case Dismissed
On Aug. 22, convinced that Ms. Diallo’s credibility was compromised, prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office
moved to dismiss the three-month-old sexual assault case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, filing a 25-page motion that served as an anatomy of a case collapsing.
The
document laid out how
prosecutors went from characterizing Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, Ms.
Diallo, as a credible woman whose account was “unwavering” to one who
was “persistently, and at times inexplicably, untruthful in describing
matters of both great and small significance.” Because eventually
prosecutors could no longer believe her, they wrote, they could not ask a
jury to do so.
Ms. Diallo’s account of what happened during and after the alleged
assault had inconsistencies, prosecutors said. Even more troubling was
what they said was a “pattern of untruthfulness” about her past. That
included a convincingly delivered story of being gang raped by soldiers
in her native Guinea; she later acknowledged that she had fabricated the
story, and prosecutors characterized her ability to recount a
fictionalized sexual assault with complete conviction as being “fatal”
to her credibility. Another issue was that she had denied that she was
interested in making money from the case, despite a recorded
conversation that prosecutors said captured her discussing just that
with her fiancé, a detainee in an
immigration jail in Arizona.
On Aug. 23, Justice Michael J. Obus of State Supreme Court in Manhattan formally
ordered the dismissal of all criminal charges against
Mr. Strauss-Kahn, but he said his order would be stayed until an
appellate court decides whether a special prosecutor should be
appointed. Prosecutors told the judge that they could not prove
the case beyond a reasonable doubt because of serious credibility issues with Ms. Diallo.
After the hearing, Mr. Strauss-Kahn issued a statement,
characterizing the past two and a half months as “a nightmare for me and
my family,” and thanking the judge, his wife and family and other
supporters.
The dismissal left Ms. Diallo with no recourse to pursue criminal
charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, though her civil lawsuit against him
is still pending. Her lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson, has been relentless
in his assertion that Mr. Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted his client and
that Mr. Vance’s office abandoned the case too soon.
Return to France and an Uncertain Future
Though Mr. Strauss-Kahn was cleared of all charges in New York,
and prominent members of his Socialist Party expressed their support,
his homecoming evoked mixed reactions. After months of notoriety, his
political career has
clearly been damaged.
On Sept. 4, 2011
he returned to a country that was still shocked
and mystified that a potential president on the verge of a planned
political campaign could have been so reckless as to have had a sexual
encounter, consensual or otherwise, with a hotel chambermaid.
His return left his Socialist Party uneasy. He came back at a time
when the party was deep into the presidential primary campaign and most
of his closest allies had joined with other politicians. Even the party
secretary, Martine Aubry, a candidate who would not have run if Mr.
Strauss-Kahn had done so, distanced herself from him for the first time,
telling French television, “I think the same thing as many women
regarding Strauss-Kahn’s attitude to women.”
But Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s legal troubles are not over. He faces a civil trial in the United States brought by the hotel maid.
The unease around Mr. Strauss-Kahn will not go away soon. Whatever
his accomplishments, his name is now associated with scandal and more
tales of promiscuity that have emerged since then. A former Socialist
prime minister, Michel Rocard, caused a ruckus when he said that Mr.
Strauss-Kahn “obviously has a mental illness, trouble controlling his
impulses.” Mr. Rocard added: “He’s out of the game. It’s a shame, he had
real talent.”
However, Mr. Strauss-Kahn may yet have a role to play. As a former
finance minister and managing director of the I.M.F., he continues to
command respect for his economic knowledge. And his endorsement of
another candidate may carry weight in the Socialist primary. It is
highly likely that his voice will be important during the presidential
campaign itself, as an adviser to the candidate and as a critic of the
policies of President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A Socialist victory next year could bring Mr. Strauss-Kahn into
government as a minister, and a Socialist defeat might make him even
more important in a party that would be seeking a new rationale.
Personal Life
Mr. Strauss-Kahn managed to rise to the corridors of power in France
even though he did not graduate from the elite Ecole Nationale
d’Administration — he failed the entrance examination — though he later
taught there after graduating from another French university. He met his
first wife in high school in Monaco and married her when he was 18.
They had three children before divorcing. In 1986, he married his second
wife, with whom he had one child. Since 1991 he has been married to
American-born French journalist Anne Sinclair, and they have no
children.
Ms. Sinclair, who inherited a fortune from her grandfather, an art
merchant who had exclusive contracts with Matisse and Picasso, was a
famous television interviewer in France, a kind of Barbara Walters,
before moving to Washington with Mr. Strauss-Kahn.
They live in a five-bedroom, five-bath brick home in fashionable
Georgetown, bought in 2007 for $4 million. They own two apartments in
France, one that cost 4 million euros ($5.7 million) that was bought
with cash, and a penthouse bought by Ms. Sinclair in 1990 for 2.5
million euros ($3.5 million), the year before they married. They also
own a house in Marrakesh, Morocco, bought for 500,000 euros ($706,000)
in 2000.
The couple’s wealth enabled them to live well beyond Mr.
Strauss-Kahn’s I.M.F. salary of about $442,000 — tax-free, as are
salaries for many employees at international agencies — and an expense
allowance of $79,120, according to the 2010 I.M.F. annual report. His
marriage to Ms. Sinclair and their lifestyle have led to Mr.
Strauss-Kahn being called a caviar socialist (a term used in France), an
image that was reinforced with the publication of a photo of him
stepping into a Porsche in Paris.
Before his arrest, Mr. Strauss-Kahn was characteristically blunt about public perception of his private life.
In an interview with the newspaper Libération, held on April 28 but
published while he was in jail, he listed three possible obstacles to
his aspirations. “Money, women and my Jewishness,” he said. “Yes, I like
women,” he went on. “So what?”
Mr. Strauss-Kahn added, “For years they’ve been talking about photos of giant orgies, but I’ve never seen anything come out.”