Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said his trial, which wrapped up Friday, was the first time his side of the aggravated pimping case against him has been fully heard.
He’ll learn June 12 whether investigative magistrates accepted his version. A verdict by the Lille court will be read on that date.
The onetime contender for the French presidency has denied investigators’ accusations that he organized or encouraged sex parties involving prostitutes.
“For the first time, throughout these last hearings, I felt I could explain myself and I have the feeling I have been listened to,” Strauss-Kahn said.
Strauss-Kahn appeared to get a boost earlier this week when the Lille prosecutor told the court that the defendant should be acquitted because of insufficient evidence.
Lille Prosecutor Frederic Fevre’s statement conformed with what his office said more than a year ago: that the evidence didn’t support the charges.
But investigative magistrates nevertheless pursued the case to trial, which began two weeks ago.
Investigators alleged that the sex parties, in locations such as Belgium, New York and Washington, stemmed from a prostitution ring, organized from the Hotel Carlton in Lille.
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 that prostitutes were involved.
In testimony last week, he acknowledged that the sexual encounters were organized in such a way that they could fit his agenda, but he denied organizing them or asking anyone else to do so for him.
“I don’t consider myself as the organizer of any party whatsoever,” he said last week.
In France, prostitution is legal, but pimping is not.
Prosecutors allege that two other defendants, businessman David Roquet and Fabrice Paszkowski, a businessman friend of the former IMF director, picked up the bills for the sex parties.
Strauss-Kahn saw his stellar career plummet to earth after a separate sex scandal that resulted in his arrest in New York in 2011. He was later cleared of the New York allegations.
Before that scandal erupted, he had been on track to run for the French presidency — an election that his Socialist Party later won with Francois Hollande as its candidate.
The Lille prosecutor’s office in late 2013 asked for Strauss-Kahn’s case to be dismissed, citing a lack of evidence. However, the investigating magistrates did not follow its recommendations.
A judgment in the case could come “within months,” Fevre’s spokeswoman, Maud Perraudeau, said Tuesday.
