Strauss-Kahn appears in court for pimping, hoping to be acquitted

Paris.-The former director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is appearing before the Lille Criminal Court starting Monday, accused like 13 other people of having organized a network of prostitutes for his service, but with a good chance of being acquitted in light of the evidence.

The trial begins at 2:00 p.m. local time (1:00 p.m. GMT) and one of the first points that the judges will have to examine is the request by one of the defense lawyers to have the proceedings annulled on the grounds that the investigation was tainted by political maneuvers against Strauss-Kahn.

The lawyer, Olivier Bluche, is basing his argument on recent revelations by Joël Specque, a former commissioner of the judicial police in Lille, who said he had received “information” from high authorities and had carried out investigations since June 2010, when the procedure for this investigation was only officially opened on 2 February 2011.

Specifically, administrative wiretapping took place between June 2010 and February 2011, authorised by the conservative government of President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012), which would support the idea that in reality it was all a plot to thwart DSK’s (the former socialist politician is known by his initials) ambitions to become head of state in the elections of May 2012.

In the words of Karl Vandamme, the lawyer for another of those sitting in the dock alongside the former finance minister, “pimping (the charge of which they are all accused) is a legal construction to be able to catch DSK in the net.”

The case file details around fifteen orgies organised in Belgium, Paris, Washington and New York, using the Carlton Hotel in Lille as their base of operations, between 2007 and 2011 – when DSK was head of the IMF – to which around 100,000 euros were spent.

Four of the prostitutes who took part in the sex parties have come forward as private prosecutors and their testimony at the hearing appears to be the main threat to Strauss-Kahn, who could theoretically be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and fined 1.5 million euros.

In their statements to investigators, these women described DSK as being eager for sex and with a marked tendency toward practices of domination and bordering on bestiality.

But to be convicted of pimping, proof is first required that he was the instigator of the orgies, from which he obtained profit, and the former IMF director’s line of defense is, firstly, that he was not aware that those brought to him by his friends were prostitutes.

But beyond that, Henri Leclerc, one of his lawyers, stressed in front of the cameras of “BFM TV” that “even if Dominique Strauss-Kahn had known that they were prostitutes, there would be no pimping.”