Sex scandal

The hotel maid who filed a sexual assault claim against International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn identified him in a police lineup on Sunday, New York police have said.

The 32-year-old woman said Strauss-Kahn attacked her when he got out of his shower naked and attempted to lock her in his room at the Sofitel in Times Square.

Earlier Sunday, police charged Strauss-Kahn with sexual assault and attempted rape.

Strauss-Kahn's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said his client would plead not guilty to the charges, which were originally going to be read to the IMF head in a New York court Sunday. This has since been pushed to Monday.

The 62-year-old, one of the world's top economists responsible for handling major financial crises, was pulled off a plane at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on Saturday, minutes before it was scheduled to leave for Paris.

"The [New York Police Department] realized he had fled, he had left his cell phone behind," NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne told a press conference. "We learned he was on an Air France plane. They held the plane and he was taken off and is now being held in police custody."

Candidacy 'doomed'

Strauss-Kahn, a member of the French opposition Socialist Party (PS), had been seen as the strongest potential challenger to President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012 presidential elections.

Pundits and political figures on both the right and the left said Strauss-Kahn's hopes for the presidency were destroyed by the arrest.

"The case and the charges [...] mark the end of his campaign and pre-campaign for the presidency and will most likely prompt the IMF to ask him to leave his post," far-right candidate Marine Le Pen told the French television channel i-Tele.

Socialist adversary Segolene Royal called the allegations "staggering" but stressed that Strauss-Kahn was innocent until proven guilty.

"Let us wait for justice to do its work and not turn this into a political soap opera," Royal told Europe 1 radio.

Fellow ally Jean-Marie Le Guen said the sexual assault claim sounded nothing like Strauss-Kahn, suggesting the IMF chief was the subject of a smear campaign.

Henri de Raincourt, the minister for overseas cooperation in Sarkozy's government, raised the possibility that Strauss-Kahn may have been the victim of a trap.

"I refuse to have a personal opinion and say 'yes it was a trap,' or 'no it wasn't a trap.' I don't know," de Raincourt said in a broadcast interview.

Bad timing

The event is expected to cause much embarrassment for the IMF, one of the world's most influential financial bodies. It also comes as the organization's second-in-command, John Lipsky, announced plans to step down in August, giving rise to fears of an impending power vacuum. Lipsky has, for the time being, taken over in Strauss-Kahn's absence.

A statement on the IMF website said it had no comment on the case and the organization remained "fully functioning and operational."

Strauss-Kahn began his five-year term as IMF managing director in 2007. He has also served as the French finance minister, member of the French National Assembly and a professor of economics at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris.

Strauss-Kahn had been due to meet with German Chancellor Angel Merkel in the German capital on Sunday to discuss the eurozone debt crisis and the EU/IMF aid package for debt-laden Greece.

A German government representative said the meeting had been cancelled as no replacement for the detained IMF head would be sent to Berlin.

However, Monday's meeting of eurozone ministers in Brussels to discuss Greece's bailout is expected to go ahead as scheduled.

"Resolving the problems remains unaffected by this," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble told ARD public television. "The IMF remains fully operational."

The IMF will be represented at Monday's meeting by Deputy Managing Director Nemat Shafik.

Author: Chuck Penfold, Matt Zuvela (Reuters, AFP)
Editor: Martin Kuebler