Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF boss indicted in May on sexual assault charges in a New York hotel, was released from house arrest Friday after prosecutors acknowledged serious problems in the accuser’s case.
In a Manhattan court hearing, a District Attorney said her office no longer trusted the testimony of Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, a maid of Guinean origin at the Manhattan Sofitel hotel who alleged that Strauss-Kahn violently attacked her on May 14 after she entered his room to clean it.
The judge subsequently lifted Strauss-Kahn's house arrest, allowing him to travel anywhere in the United States but not abroad.
The Manhattan district attorney's office revealed that the 32-year-old hotel maid had committed a host of minor frauds to better her life in the US since arriving in the country seven years ago, including lying on immigration paperwork, cheating on her taxes and misstating her income so she could live in an apartment reserved for the poor.
Days after Strauss-Kahn's arrest, the maid made a telephone call to a man who was incarcerated in Arizona for dreag dealing, and that also raised suspicions.
While the case has taken a dramatic turn, it has not been dismissed, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said Friday.
The indictment and charges, including criminal sexual acts and sexual abuse, against 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn, still stand, he said. The next court session is scheduled for July 18.
The attorney for the hotel maid, Kenneth Thompson, lashed out at the district attorney’s decision to release Strauss-Kahn. While acknowledging that his client erred in lying to prosecutors, he said that had no bearing on whether she was raped.
Thompson said there were photos, medical tests and other evidence of a forced sexual encounter, including vaginal bruising and a torn ligament in the woman’s shoulder.
Since Friday, some in France speculate about a possible return of Strauss-Kahn into French politics if the New York prosecutors drop charges against him.
Strauss-Kahn was the opinion polls favourite to win the 2012 presidential election in France before he was arrested in a Paris-bound Air France plane in May.
Strauss-Kahn's possible return has thrown the Socialist party's primary race into disarray. The party had presumed his presidential hopes were dead and opened its selection process for another candidate last week. Candidates must declare by 13 July for an October vote.
French philosopher Bernard-Henry Levy spoke of a noble man who had been the victim of a "spiral of horror and calumny". He said that Strauss-Kahn had been "lynched" by the "friends of minorities" in the US. He said that because the victim was "poor and immigrant" she had been presumed innocent, and because Strauss-Kahn was "powerful" he had been presumed guilty.
A gifted orator, fluent in English and German, the silver-haired Strauss-Kahn was a former economics professor who won respect in Europe as France's finance minister from 1997 to 1999.
During that time, he took part in negotiations on the creation of the single European currency, the euro, and generated a wave of privatisations, including that of France Telecom, overcoming resistance within socialist ranks.
He had presented himself as the reform candidate for the 187-country International Monetary Fund (IMF), based in Washington, when he took the helmof the global lender in 2007, promising to be "a consensus builder."
But the Frenchman's candidacy had stirred controversy in Europe, and he has had several run-ins with scandal.
In 2008 he was discovered to be having an affair with an Hungarian IMF economist. The affair was investigated by the IMF, which concluded he had not exerted pressure on the woman, but said he had made an error of judgment.
Born to a Jewish family in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine on April 25, 1949, Strauss-Kahn spent part of his childhood in Morocco and later studied at the elite Paris political school Sciences-Po and the top business school HEC.
He entered politics in 1986, winning a parliament seat to represent the alpine Haute-Savoie region, and was later re-elected in the Paris region of Val d'Oise in 1988.
Named Finance Minister in 1997, Strauss-Kahn was forced to step down two years later because of allegations that he had received payment from a student health insurance fund for legal work he did not perform.
He was cleared of any wrongdoing in 2001.
Strauss-Kahn has been married three times, the first time to his high-school sweetheart at the age of 18.
His third and current wife, Anne Sinclair, is arguably the bigger celebrity, despite having long ago swapped her job as the most-watched interviewer on French current affairs TV for the role of loyal spouse, and part-time blogger.
Sinclair, who married Strauss-Kahn when he was an Industry Minister in 1991 under the late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, is granddaughter and heiress of one of France's biggest art dealers, and was born in New York where her father fled the war-time Nazi persecution of Jews.