No stranger to hotel sex scandals, former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn must now explain to French police his interpretation of certain sexual encounters in France and Washington, D.C. that may be tied to a hotel prostitution ring. Investigators want to determine whether corporate funds from a large French construction company were used to pay for orgies and prostitutes. Based on one of DSK’s attorney’s comments, it appears that they’re relying in part on the “he didn’t know they were hookers” defense: “He could easily not have known,” Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer said recently on French radio, “because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you’re not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman.”
Strauss-Kahn, once a favorite to become president of France, arrived for questioning on Tuesday at a police station in the French city of Lille, where he can be held for 48 hours as a suspect. If he is then placed under formal investigation, the charge will not be for using prostitutes, which is legal in France, but for benefiting from the misuse of company money.
The alleged prostitution ring, centered at the Carlton Lille hotel, is the focus of a probe surrounding the Belgian pimp Dominique Alderweireld, or “Dodo la Saumure,” a nickname that translates to Briny Dodo, which apparently has something to do with salty fish. He looks how you might expect him to.
Strauss-Kahn — who was accused of sexual assault in a New York hotel last year before prosecutors dropped the charges — has admitted to taking part in orgies set up by “friends,” but claims he “never paid a centime,” the Telegraph reports. An “uninhibited sex life” is one thing, but the Frenchman insists, “I have a horror of prostitutes and pimping.”
This post has been updated throughout.
