The sexual proclivities of ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn come under the spotlight again Monday when he goes on trial in France for “pimping” four years after a sex scandal cost him a shot at the presidency.
The disgraced 65-year-old economist finds himself back in the dock — this time in the northern French city of Lille — accused of being part of a prostitution ring used by his entourage to organise sex parties for him in Brussels, Paris and Washington.
Lurid details of group sex and high-end prostitution are likely to emerge in the three-week trial during which Strauss-Kahn will take the stand alongside a colourful cast of characters including luxury hotel managers, police, freemasons and a brothel owner nicknamed “Dodo the Pimp.”
The trial will be the latest in a series of legal woes that have allowed judges and journalists to peek behind the bedroom door of a man once tipped as a potential challenger to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The former head of the International Monetary Fund, known in France as DSK, saw his career implode in 2011 when he was paraded handcuffed in front of the world`s cameras after a New York hotel maid accused him of sexual assault.
While those criminal charges were dropped and the case settled in a civil suit, further humiliation ensued as a litany of sordid tales — from affairs to further charges of violence against women — emerged.
Then, six months after the scandal in New York, his name cropped up in an investigation into a prostitution ring in northern France and Belgium known as the “Carlton Affair” after one of the swish hotels in Lille where local businessmen and police officials would organise sex parties.The run-of-the-mill probe into a vice ring revealed some of the prostitutes involved had been paid to participate in orgies attended by Strauss-Kahn, who was charged with “aggravated pimping in an organised group”.
