IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged on Sunday with trying to rape a New York hotel maid in a scandal that appeared to wreck his hopes of becoming France's next president. A handcuffed and drained Strauss-Kahn appeared before before reporters for the first time on Sunday night when two police detectives escorted him from a police station to a gray, four-door sedan. Police said he would be taken to the booking station at Manhattan Criminal Court.
His hair neatly parted, Strauss-Kahn wore a black overcoat, blue dress shirt and black dress slacks. He kept his eyes straight ahead, avoiding looking at the battery of cameras that had staked out the site for hours.
The sexual assault charges throw the IMF into turmoil just as it is trying to ease an escalating euro zone debt crisis, and they turn France's presidential election campaign upside down when polls had made Strauss-Kahn a clear front runner.
The charismatic 62-year-old, who led the International Monetary Fund through the 2007-09 global financial meltdown and has been central in galvanizing Europe to tackle its debt woes, for long had the reputation of a womanizer. But the charges he faces are in another realm.
A maid, 32, said he emerged naked from the bathroom and sexually assaulted her inside his $3,000-a-night suite at the Sofitel hotel near New York's Times Square on Saturday afternoon. --- READ MORE
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