Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been detained for questioning as a suspect in a corruption probe into alleged orgies with prostitutes in Paris and Washington paid for by two businessmen. The former IMF chief arrived at a police station in Lille, northern France, this morning to testify as a witness in the case but was immediately taken into custody for interrogation with a view to possible charges.
This man was not long ago bruited about as the next president of France. How lucky for France he was arrested for taking liberties with a maid in that queerly puritanical country across the pond
The timing of the arrest is a blow to the Socialist party, whose presidential candidate François Hollande is favored to win the race. The National Front's former leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen said what everyone was thinking it would be "astonishing" if the Socialist party were unaware of Mr Strauss-Kahn's sexual practices.
The 62-year-old has been detained on suspicion of "complicity in pimping" and "misuse of company funds" and could thus see his detention go from the normal 48 hours to 96 hours.
The probe is focused on a prostitution ring that allegedly supplied clients of Lille's luxury Carlton hotel. The potential charges depend on whether investigators are convinced Strauss-Kahn knew that the women he had sex with in restaurants, hotels and swingers' clubs in Paris, Washington and other European capitals were prostitutes paid for with company funds.
Strauss-Kahn's lawyer has said his client could have been "totally unaware" that the women he met in swinger sessions were prostitutes since "they were all naked at the time."
Strauss-Kahn's name was linked to the Carlton case as part of a probe into a prostitution ring linked to notorious Belgian pimp Dominique Alderweireld, nicknamed "Dodo la Saumure".
Strauss-Kahn admits taking part in orgies arranged by "friends" as part of his "uninhibited sex life", but that "he never paid a centime" and never asked if his sex partners were being paid. He is quoted as saying, "I have a horror of prostitutes and pimping."
Scrub yourself hard, then, as they seem not to have had a horror of you. Odd, that.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been detained for questioning as a suspect in a corruption probe into alleged orgies with prostitutes in Paris and Washington paid for by two businessmen. The former IMF chief arrived at a police station in Lille, northern France, this morning to testify as a witness in the case but was immediately taken into custody for interrogation with a view to possible charges. 
