Dominique Strauss-Kahn
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.”
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