Sapa-AFP
Paris
Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has admitted in a new book to having an uninhibited sex life, as its author said the one-time contender for the French presidency was the victim of a plot.
The book, by French journalist Michel Taubmann, sees Strauss-Kahn open up about the sex scandals that have dogged him since he was accused in May of having sexually assaulted a New York hotel maid.
It accuses the maid, Nafissatou Diallo, of being part of a conspiracy to smear the French politician and insinuates that she may have stolen an IMF-issued BlackBerry cellphone.
“Nothing would have happened if I had not had this consensual, but stupid relationship with Nafissatou Diallo,” Strauss-Kahn said in the book, titled The DSK Affair, the Counter-Investigation.
“That day, I opened the door to all the other affairs,” Strauss-Kahn said.
According to Taubmann, Nafissatou entered Strauss-Kahn’s upmarket Manhattan hotel room on May 14 as the ex-IMF chief was leaving his bathroom naked.
Nafissatou gave him “a suggestive look”, which he took as “a proposal”, and the two proceeded to have sex.
“Dominique Strauss-Kahn was set up. This man did not rape anyone, neither in New York, nor in Paris nor anywhere,” Taubmann said on Canal Plus television yesterday. “This was a political affair, not a question of morals.”
The book also notes that Strauss-Kahn’s Blackberry – which he suspected had been hacked by his political enemies – went missing from the hotel room after his encounter with Diallo.
Strauss-Kahn, who was then expected to beat President Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s 2012 presidential election, was taken off a plane to Paris by police after Diallo said he had attacked her.
He resigned as head of the IMF after his arrest, but has always denied rape.
The charges were later dropped after prosecutors said Diallo lied about some details of her allegations, but the case and subsequent claims of sexual misconduct in France were enough to end Strauss-Kahn’s political ambitions.
Strauss-Kahn later faced an investigation in France for an alleged attempted rape against writer Tristane Banon in 2003.
Prosecutors ruled that while Strauss-Kahn had admitted to acts “that could be qualified as sexual assault”, the statute of limitations on such an offence – more minor than attempted rape – was three years.
He has also been linked to the case of eight leading members of society in the northern French city of Lille charged with operating a ring that provided prostitutes to clients, including allegedly to Strauss-Kahn, and organised sex parties in luxury hotels.
In the book, Strauss-Kahn admits to attending swingers’ parties, but denies knowing participants were prostitutes.
“I participated in swingers’ nights, that’s true. But usually the participants in these nights are not prostitutes,” he said. “When someone introduces you to his girlfriend, you do not ask him if she is a prostitute.”
Strauss-Kahn said he had never committed an illegal act and insisted that uninhibited sex lives were hardly unusual among the French elite.
“Apart from my liberal sexual life, which I am not alone in having in the world of politics and business and which is nothing illegal, there is nothing to reproach me for,” he said.
In New York, Diallo’s lawyers, Kenneth Thompson and Douglas Wigdor, hit back at Taubmann’s claims.
“Strauss-Kahn’s absurd claim that Ms Diallo was told to steal his BlackBerry and somehow looked at him seductively and consented to his violent and abusive sexual acts is complete fantasy,” they said.