Strauss-Kahn freed after grilling in French prostitution inquiry

PARIS -- Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been released from a French police station after nearly two days of questioning over a suspected hotel prostitution ring.

Judicial officials say Strauss-Kahn, a one-time French presidential hopeful whose political aspirations were derailed by a May 2001 sexual assault accusation in New York City, will be summoned again next month by three judges who will decide if there is enough evidence to file charges in a case centering on the alleged prostitution ring in France and Belgium.


He was held by police for 32 hours and spent the night in a cell, according to NBC News.

Strauss-Kahn held in French prostitution ring

French TV footage showed police restraining reporters behind metal barriers as a tinted-window sedan carrying Strauss-Kahn left the police station in northern city of Lille.

The investigation is focused on a prostitution ring that allegedly supplied clients of Lille's luxury Carlton Hotel. Police want to establish whether Strauss-Kahn knew that women at parties he attended in Paris and Washington were prostitutes.

Strauss-Kahn believed he was participating in swingers' parties and had no reason to suspect that the women were prostitutes, his lawyer Henri Leclerc has said previously. Consorting with prostitutes is legal in France; however, Strauss-Kahn could be charged for benefiting from misappropriated company funds if investigators conclude he attended sex sessions with prostitutes that company executives paid for out of expense accounts, according to Britain's The Guardian.

Sex scandal
Strauss-Kahn's job as head of the International Monetary Fund, as well as his presidential ambitions, came to an end last spring when he was accused of trying to rape a Guinean chambermaid in a Manhattan hotel suite. Criminal charges were later dropped when it emerged that the maid, Nafissatou Diallo, was an unreliable witness. Diallo is now pursuing him in a civil action.

Separate attempted-rape accusations by a Parisian writer also were shelved by French police on October 13 -- three days before Strauss-Kahn's name surfaced again in the Lille investigation.

Nancy Ing from NBC News and Reuters contributed to this report.

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

Discuss this post

Thank God..

Its not fair to hold an innocent man in custody. He did not know the women were prostitues, he thought its common in europe naked women giving BJ during company meetings..

You know what is so sad about this whole thing; God knows how much this freak has stolen in all those IMF years. With this type of character, I cannot imagine he did anything decent during his years as IMF chief......

    Reply#1 - Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:58 PM EST

    I preferred the previous headline, it was ironically more appropriate:

    Strauss-Kahn held in French prostitution probe

    I wonder who was holding him while he was probing?

      Reply#2 - Wed Feb 22, 2012 4:16 PM EST

      IMF is full of elitists that have this idea they know what is best for the "little" guy. PHUC the IMF, ECB, EU, and the pigs in those organizations that are rapists and pedophiles and abuse anybody in their way.

      Nothing like using taxpayer dollars to use on wild orgies and gay sex while trying to flatten the earth with "globalization". The misery on the masses of people around the world is astounding because of this 5cumbag. Happy it took a hotel maid to expose this pig and his habit.

      Tell this pig to keep his dic in his pants and to STFU.

      Any questions?

        Reply#3 - Thu Feb 23, 2012 7:37 AM EST

        well said.

        I would make one tiny modification; " Tell this pig to keep his dic in his behind.." Then he will STFU..

          #3.1 - Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:23 PM EST
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