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Strauss-Kahn, France's would-be president ABCD New
York - The 62-year-old
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was arrested
Saturday 14 May at John F. Kennedy airport while on an Air France flight heading for
Paris. He is charged with attempted rape and a criminal sex act in New
York. The charges stem from a sexual attack and unlawful imprisonment that allegedly occurred
Saturday against a 32-year-old woman at a Sofitel hotel in midtown
Manhattan. Strauss-Kahn will plead not guilty, his lawyer Benjamin Brafman
said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel intended to meet Sunday with Strauss-Kahn,
to discuss the European debt crisis.
Strauss-Kahn drew heat in France for his lifestyle that was dubbed luxurious and
ostentatious. This is the second time since he took the helm of the IMF in November 2007 that
he has faced allegations of misconduct. In 2008, within months of taking over his new role, Strauss-Kahn was embroiled in a sex scandal after arranging a
larger-than-usual severance payment for glamorous Hungarian economist Piroska
Nagy 
,a female economist at the IMF, which had led to an investigation by the IMF
board, concluding that while he had made a serious error of judgment, he shouldn’t be fired. French President Sarkozy had warned Strauss-Kahn about his womanising before he left to run the
IMF, telling him: "Over there they don't joke about this sort of
thing. Your life will be passed under a magnifying glass. Avoid taking the lift alone with
interns. France cannot permit a scandal."
Strauss-Kahn was the front-runner in the latest opinion polls to win next year's presidential election in France
as the socialist contender and replace 'Rabbi Jacob' Nicolas Sarkozy. Brought up in a
liberal Jewish household in Morocco and Monaco, he launched into an academic career before entering
politics. Like Sarkozy, he has been married three times. Strauss-Kahn's third and current wife, Anne Sinclair,
married him when he was an industry minister in 1991.
Ms Sinclair (American-born Anne-Élise Schwartz; July 15, 1948) is the daughter of Joseph-Robert Schwartz (who changed his name
to Sinclair in 1949), a Jewish business-man and Micheline Nanette Rosenberg, daughter of
one of the biggest French-American art-dealers Paul Rosenberg  .
Ms Sinclair hosted one of the most popular political shows during more than thirteen years on TF1, the largest European private TV
channel. As
granddaughter of Rosenberg, she is the heiress of his fortune. Ms Sinclair
publicly forgave her husband for his 2008 'one-night stand'.
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