Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is due to testify Tuesday in a court in Lille, northern France, in his trial on charges that he was complicit in a pimping operation.
The trial opened a week ago but it’s the first time that Strauss-Kahn, who saw his high-flying career plummet to earth after a separate sex scandal which resulted in his arrest in New York in 2011, is expected to take the stand.
Strauss-Kahn is charged with aggravated pimping on the grounds that he organized or encouraged group sex parties in both Europe and the United States. He denies the allegations.
The trial is being closely watched both in France, where Strauss-Kahn is commonly known as DSK, and around the world.
There were dramatic scenes as Strauss-Kahn’s car arrived at court Tuesday, when topless protesters with anti-DSK slogans painted on their bodies clambered onto his car. The activists, from the feminist group Femen, were then bundled away by police.
Prosecutors say the operations of the prostitution ring, organized from the Hotel Carlton in Lille, stretched all the way to New York and Washington. Prostitutes involved in the parties said they were like orgies.
Influential friend
Strauss-Kahn, who was married to French TV journalist Anne Sinclair until their divorce in 2013, has never denied that he took part in the parties. But the crux of his defense is that he did not know prostitutes were involved.
In France, prostitution is legal, but pimping is not.
There are 13 other defendants in the case besides Strauss-Kahn, according to Patricia Corbellego from Action Teams Against Pimping, one of the plaintiffs in the case.
First to testify on Tuesday were David Roquet and Fabrice Paszkowski, both businessmen and friends of Strauss-Kahn, whom prosecutors say picked up the bills for the sex parties for their influential friend.
Next was Jean-Christophe Lagarde, a former senior policeman also allegedly involved in the prostitution ring.
Paszkowski and other defendants have previously been adamant that Strauss-Kahn was unaware the women were prostitutes and that he never paid them.
The prosecutor’s office in late 2013 asked for Strauss-Kahn’s case to be dismissed, citing lack of evidence. However, the investigating magistrates did not follow their recommendations.
‘He has suffered a lot’
A biographer of Strauss-Kahn, Michel Taubman, told CNN that he believes the former IMF chief’s story in what is known in France as the “Carlton affair.”
“If he knew that the girls were prostitutes I think he would not have made them come to Washington and he would not have had a picture of one of them in his office,” said Taubman.
But if the court does not believe the former director of the IMF and he is found guilty of the charges, Strauss Kahn could be sentenced up to 10 years in prison and fined 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million.)
In the years since his New York arrest, Strauss Kahn has spent much of his time trying to clear his name. He has tried to revive his reputation and start a new career by creating an economic consultancy, taking on both private and governmental clients. He needs these clients, according to Taubman, in order to pay his legal bills.
Taubman does not believe Strauss Kahn can or will ever be directly involved in politics or policy making again.
“Strauss-Kahn is now 66 and he is a father, a grandfather, he has suffered a lot, his family has suffered a lot and I don’t think he will have the energy or the will have the will to come back in politics you know.”
Strauss-Kahn said almost as much himself in an interview with CNN’s Richard Quest, long before the trial opened in Lille.
“So I made this mistake to believe that you could have a public life doing what you had to do in the public life and … And that you can have a private life,” he said.
“And my mistake was certainly to believe that you can have these two things together without any connection between. It was wrong. It was wrong in the way you say because people are not expecting this kind of heterodox behavior from somebody having public responsibility.”
Presidential hopes dashed
The May 2011 sex scandal not only ended Strauss-Kahn’s tenure as IMF director — a role which gave him huge influence on the economies of countries around the world — but dashed his presidential hopes.
He was the leading prospective Socialist candidate in the French presidential elections of 2012, an election his party won. Strauss-Kahn could well have taken the presidency, which instead was claimed by Francois Hollande.
The scandal erupted when Strauss-Kahn was arrested at New York’s Kennedy Airport on charges he had sexually assaulted a maid, Nafissatou Diallo, at a hotel where he had stayed. He resigned in disgrace from the IMF and months of legal battles followed.
In the end he was cleared of the charge and allowed to return to France — only to find that his name had come up in connection with the alleged Lille prostitution ring.