IMF chief jailed without bail in NY hotel-sex case

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund, waits to be arraigned Mon­day in Man­hat­tan Crim­i­nal Court for the alleged attack on a maid who went into his pent­house suite at a hotel near Times Square to clean it. Strauss-Kahn must remain jailed at least until his next court hear­ing for attempted rape and other charges, a judge said Mon­day. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Richard Drew)

JENNIFER PELTZ

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — Hag­gard and unshaven after a week­end in jail, the chief of the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund was denied release on bail Mon­day on charges of try­ing to rape a hotel maid as alle­ga­tions of other, sim­i­lar attacks by Dominique Strauss-Kahn began to emerge.

In France, a lawyer for a nov­el­ist said the writer is likely to file a crim­i­nal com­plaint accus­ing Strauss-Kahn of sex­u­ally assault­ing her nine years ago. A French law­maker accused him of attack­ing other maids in pre­vi­ous stays at the same lux­ury hotel. And in New York, pros­e­cu­tors said they are work­ing to ver­ify reports of at least one other case, which they sug­gested was overseas.

Strauss-Kahn’s week­end arrest rocked the finan­cial world as the IMF grap­ples with the Euro­pean debt cri­sis, and upended French pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics. Strauss-Kahn, a mem­ber of France’s Social­ist party, was widely con­sid­ered the strongest poten­tial chal­lenger next year to Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy.

Mak­ing his first appear­ance on the sex charges, a grim-looking Strauss-Kahn stood slumped before a judge in a dark rain­coat and open-collared shirt. The 62-year-old, silver-haired Strauss-Kahn said noth­ing as a lawyer pro­fessed his inno­cence and strove in vain to get him released on bail.

The judge ruled against him after pros­e­cu­tors warned that the wealthy banker might flee to France and put him­self beyond the reach of U.S. law like the film­maker Roman Polanski.

“This bat­tle has just begun,” defense attor­ney Ben­jamin Braf­man told scores of reporters out­side the cour­t­house, adding that Strauss-Kahn might appeal the bail denial.

Strauss-Kahn is accused of attack­ing a maid who had gone in to clean his pent­house suite Sat­ur­day after­noon at a lux­ury hotel near Times Square. He is charged with attempted rape, sex abuse, a crim­i­nal sex act, unlaw­ful impris­on­ment and forcible touch­ing. The most seri­ous charge car­ries five to 25 years in prison.

Strauss-Kahn, who has headed the inter­na­tional lend­ing agency since 2007, was in New York on per­sonal busi­ness and was pay­ing his own way, so he can­not claim diplo­matic immu­nity, the IMF said. He could seek that pro­tec­tion only if he were con­duct­ing offi­cial busi­ness, spokesman William Mur­ray said. The agency’s exec­u­tive board met infor­mally Mon­day for a report on the charges against Strauss-Kahn, its man­ag­ing director.

The French news­pa­per Le Monde, cit­ing peo­ple close to Strauss-Kahn, said he had reserved the $3,000-a-night suite at the Sof­i­tel hotel for one night for a quick trip to have lunch with his daugh­ter, who is study­ing in New York.

The 32-year-old maid told author­i­ties that she thought the suite was empty but that Strauss-Kahn emerged from the bath­room naked, chased her down a hall­way, pulled her into a bed­room and dragged her into a bath­room, police said.

He seized her breasts, tried to pull down her panty­hose, grabbed at her crotch and forced her to per­form oral sex on him dur­ing the encounter at about noon, accord­ing to a court com­plaint. She ulti­mately broke free, escaped the room and told hotel staffers what had hap­pened, author­i­ties said. She was treated at a hos­pi­tal for minor injuries.

“The vic­tim pro­vided a very pow­er­ful and detailed account of the vio­lent sex­ual assault,” Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney John “Ardie” McConnell said. He added that foren­sic evi­dence may sup­port her account. Strauss-Kahn vol­un­tar­ily sub­mit­ted to a foren­sic exam­i­na­tion Sun­day night.

Braf­man said defense lawyers believe the foren­sic evi­dence “will not be con­sis­tent with a forcible encounter.” Defense lawyers wouldn’t elab­o­rate, but Braf­man said “there are sig­nif­i­cant issues that were already found” that make it “quite likely that he will be ulti­mately be exonerated.”

Pros­e­cu­tors asked the judge to hold Strauss-Kahn with­out bail, not­ing that he lives in France, is wealthy, has an inter­na­tional job and was arrested on a Paris-bound plane at Kennedy Air­port. He had left the Sof­i­tel hotel before police arrived, leav­ing his cell­phone behind, and appeared hur­ried on sur­veil­lance record­ings, author­i­ties said.

Pros­e­cu­tors said they couldn’t force his return from France if he went there.

“He would be liv­ing openly and noto­ri­ously in France, just like Roman Polan­ski,” said Chief Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney Daniel Alonso, refer­ring to the film direc­tor long sought by Cal­i­for­nia author­i­ties for sen­tenc­ing in a 1977 child sex case. Swiss police arrested him in 2009, but he was freed last year when Switzer­land declined to extra­dite him to the United States.

Defense lawyers sug­gested bail be set at $1 mil­lion and promised that the IMF man­ag­ing direc­tor would remain in New York City. His lawyers said Strauss-Kahn wasn’t try­ing to elude police Sat­ur­day: The IMF head rushed out of the hotel at about 12:30 p.m. to get to a lunch date with a fam­ily mem­ber, then caught a flight for which he had long had a ticket, accord­ing to Braf­man and fel­low defense lawyer William W. Taylor.

“This is not a case of some­one who com­mits a crime, runs to the air­port and jumps on the first avail­able plane,” Braf­man said.

Still, Crim­i­nal Court Judge Melissa C. Jack­son said the fact that Strauss-Kahn was on a plane when arrested “raises some con­cerns.” She ordered him jailed at least until a court pro­ceed­ing on Friday.

Strauss-Kahn makes an annual tax-free salary as head of the IMF of $420,930, plus an annual “scale of liv­ing” allowance of $75,350, accord­ing to a 2007 IMF news release.

Accord­ing to the 2000 biog­ra­phy “Les Vies Cachees de DSK” by Vin­cent Giret and Veronique Le Bil­lon, Strauss-Kahn’s wife, Anne Sin­clair, was one of France’s highest-paid TV jour­nal­ists before she gave up her job to avoid a pos­si­ble con­flict of inter­est when her hus­band became a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter in 1997. The biog­ra­phy says Sin­clair is also a wealthy heiress, whose grand­fa­ther Paul Rosen­berg was a promi­nent mod­ern art dealer before the Sec­ond World War.

French news­pa­pers have inven­to­ried the couple’s real estate hold­ings, which report­edly include a six-room apart­ment in Paris’ chic 16th arrondisse­ment; a 240-square-meter (2,583-sq. feet) apart­ment on the lux­u­ri­ous Place des Vos­ges; a home in Mar­rakech, and a house in Washington.

Strauss-Khan will be held in pro­tec­tive cus­tody in the city’s Rik­ers Island jail because of his high pro­file, said city Cor­rec­tion Depart­ment spokesman Stephen Morello. Unlike most pris­on­ers, who share 50-bed bar­racks, Strauss-Kahn will have a single-bed cell and eat all his meals alone there. Also, when he is out­side his cell, he will have a prison-guard escort.

Mean­while, a lawyer for 31-year-old French nov­el­ist Tris­tane Banon said she will prob­a­bly file a com­plaint alleg­ing Strauss-Kahn sex­u­ally attacked her in 2002. Lawyer David Koubbi told French radio RTL that Banon hadn’t pressed her claim ear­lier because of “pres­sures” but would do so now because “she knows she’ll be taken seriously.”

The Asso­ci­ated Press is iden­ti­fy­ing Banon as an alleged vic­tim of sex­ual assault because she has gone pub­lic with her account.

Banon’s mother, Anne Man­souret, a regional Social­ist offi­cial in Nor­mandy, said she had advised her daugh­ter at the time against pur­su­ing her claim.

A French law­maker from a rival polit­i­cal party also alleged, with­out offer­ing evi­dence, that Strauss-Kahn had vic­tim­ized sev­eral maids dur­ing past stays at the Sof­i­tel near Times Square.

The hotel issued a state­ment call­ing con­ser­v­a­tive law­maker Michel Debre’s claims “base­less and defam­a­tory.” Sof­i­tel man­age­ment “has had no knowl­edge of any pre­vi­ous attempted aggres­sions,” the hotel said, adding that it had set up a hot­line for work­ers to report inci­dents more than a year ago.

McConnell, the assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney, said in court Mon­day that New York author­i­ties are work­ing to ver­ify at least one other case of “con­duct sim­i­lar to the con­duct alleged.” When the judge asked whether the poten­tial other inci­dent occurred in the United States, McConnell said he “believed that was abroad.”

Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said they had no imme­di­ate response to the alle­ga­tions emerg­ing from overseas.

In France, defend­ers of Strauss-Kahn, a for­mer finance min­is­ter who had topped the polls as a pos­si­ble can­di­date in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions next year, said they sus­pected he was the vic­tim of a smear campaign.

The 187-nation IMF pro­vides emer­gency loans to coun­tries in severe dis­tress and tries to main­tain global finan­cial stability.

Asso­ci­ated Press writ­ers Jamey Keaten in Paris, Chris Rugaber in Wash­ing­ton and Tom Hays in New York con­tributed to this report.

Posted by AP News on May 16 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.