Dominique Strauss-Kahn, widely known as DSK, formerly France’s minister of the economy and finance, ex-director-general of the International Monetary Fund, frontrunner as Socialist candidate in the presidential elections of 2012, is a broken man. Or so it would seem.
He was acquitted last week by the Lille criminal court of aggravated pimping and organising an international chain of prostitution, but his reputation is nonetheless in ruins. Ever since he was taken off an Air France flight in handcuffs by New York police in May 2011, and charged with raping a maid in the Manhattan Sofitel — a case dropped after his accuser was deemed an unreliable witness — he has been living a nightmare.
No sooner was one charge dropped than another sprang up. Back in Paris, a young female journalist accused him of attempted rape during a magazine interview. When this case too was dropped on the grounds of insufficient evidence, the pimping investigation began.
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