Dominique Strauss Khan and how a man removed his name from the ballot

There was money, a truckload of it — and suddenly the man behind it all was said to have assaulted a hotel maid. Yes, it is not out of place for filthy-rich men to have weird obsessions but stay with me here.

On 14 May 2011, Strauss-Kahn was arrested and charged with the sexual assault and attempted rape of 32-year-old Nafissatou Diallo, a housekeeper at the Sofitel New York Hotel in the Manhattan borough earlier that day.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former managing director of the International Monetary Fund at that point was at the tail end of his term at the organization and had his name in the hat for the French Presidential seat. Before then, he served as finance minister for the country.

The criminal charges were dropped, and he settled a civil suit with his accuser for an undisclosed sum. At the time of his arrest, he was hoping to represent the Socialist Party as a presidential candidate the following year. The scandal put an end to his political career.

Were the event carefully orchestrated to prevent the man who would have won the French election by a large margin from contesting? His removal from the field was a massive boost for conservative Nicholas Sarkozy, whose ratings are so bad that polls show he risks being knocked out in the first round of voting.

When the case came to the fore, politicians from all parties said Strauss-Kahn, popularly known by his initials DSK, should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, but political commentators were unanimous in pronouncing the last rites on his political career. It had to be — DSK stepped down from his IMF role, took his name off the ballot and went into political obscurity.

One thing was certain at that point: Dominique Strauss-Kahn will not be the next president of the French republic,” the conservative daily Le Figaro said in an editorial. Liberation front page headline read simply: “DSK Out.

What really happened?

The sex scandal that toppled Dominique Strauss-Kahn gripped the world with its salacious allegations, dramatic twists, and a stunning turnabout in court. But the public saw only a fraction of what really went on behind the scenes, where justice played second fiddle to egos, political pressures, and investigative missteps.

Nafissatou Diallo alleges that Strauss-Kahn ran at her naked, molested her and forced her to perform oral sex on him. The claims led to a criminal investigation against the then-IMF boss and led to his house arrest in Manhattan.

She said Strauss-Kahn attacked her on 14 May 2011 as she attempted to clean his room.

But charges of attempted rape, sex abuse, forcible touching and unlawful imprisonment were eventually dropped, with prosecutors citing “substantial credibility issues” with Diallo.

Despite the collapse of a criminal investigation, Diallo continued to pursue Strauss-Kahn through the civil courts, leading to a counter-defamation suit by the former IMF head.

At first, Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers tried to claim that their client had diplomatic immunity him from being sued. But that failed, with the courts dismissing his claims of protection.

A settlement in the case was widely expected ahead of the hearing. Strauss-Kahn’s New York attorneys had previously acknowledged that talks had taken place. But they dismissed as “flatly false” a French newspaper’s report that the amount agreed to was a payment of $6m to Diallo.

In the end, an agreement was reached and the case was swept away.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is today a political nonentity in France. He had to take his name off the ballot for the election. In more recent developments, he was named in the Pandora reports that rocked the world.

Could there have been a conspiracy?

It was election season and you cannot put these things past politicians — it is all part of the dirty little games they all play. Jay Epstein wrote in the New York Review that DSK had an issue on that day:

“…He had a serious problem with one of his BlackBerry cell phones — which he called his IMF BlackBerry. This was the phone he used to send and receive texts and e-mails — including for both personal and IMF business. According to several sources who are close to DSK, he had received a text message that morning from Paris from a woman friend temporarily working as a researcher at the Paris offices of the UMP, Sarkozy’s center-right political party.

She warned DSK, who was then pulling ahead of Sarkozy in the polls, that at least one private e-mail he had recently sent from his BlackBerry to his wife, Anne Sinclair, had been read at the UMP offices in Paris. It is unclear how the UMP offices might have received this e-mail, but if it had come from his IMF BlackBerry, he had reason to suspect he might be under electronic surveillance in New York. He had already been warned by a friend in the French diplomatic corps that an effort would be made to embarrass him with a scandal. The warning that his BlackBerry might have been hacked was therefore all the more alarming.

Of course, the UMP were quick to deny it. “To imagine that what happened to Mr Strauss-Kahn was the object of any kind of involvement by the UMP, excuse me, but let me say that it’s a bit obvious as a manipulation,” The secretary-general of the UMP, Jean-Francois Cope said.

If you need more insight, you can check out the book : DSK : the scandal that brought down Dominique Strauss-Kahn