Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been detained for questioning as a suspect in a corruption probe into alleged orgies with prostitutes in Paris and Washington paid for by two businessmen. The former IMF chief arrived at a police station in Lille, northern France, this morning to testify as a witness in the case but was immediately taken into custody for interrogation with a view to possible charges. | This man was not long ago bruited about as the next president of France. How lucky for France he was arrested for taking liberties with a maid in that queerly puritanical country across the pond |
The 62-year-old has been detained on suspicion of "complicity in pimping" and "misuse of company funds" and could thus see his detention go from the normal 48 hours to 96 hours.
The probe is focused on a prostitution ring that allegedly supplied clients of Lille's luxury Carlton hotel. The potential charges depend on whether investigators are convinced Strauss-Kahn knew that the women he had sex with in restaurants, hotels and swingers' clubs in Paris, Washington and other European capitals were prostitutes paid for with company funds.
Strauss-Kahn's lawyer has said his client could have been "totally unaware" that the women he met in swinger sessions were prostitutes since "they were all naked at the time."
Strauss-Kahn's name was linked to the Carlton case as part of a probe into a prostitution ring linked to notorious Belgian pimp Dominique Alderweireld, nicknamed "Dodo la Saumure".
Strauss-Kahn admits taking part in orgies arranged by "friends" as part of his "uninhibited sex life", but that "he never paid a centime" and never asked if his sex partners were being paid. He is quoted as saying, "I have a horror of prostitutes and pimping."
| Scrub yourself hard, then, as they seem not to have had a horror of you. Odd, that. |