The prosecution of former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn for pimping is to go ahead, French judges ruled Wednesday.

The ruling was given just over a week after Strauss-Kahn settled a separate civil case in New York with a hotel maid who accused him of attempted rape in May 2011, ending his French presidential hopes and career at the IMF.

While the New York settlement brought his U.S. legal woes to an end, the latest decision by the court in Douai in northern France means he remains under the legal spotlight at home.

"Dominique Strauss-Kahn's defense team is certain that he will ultimately be cleared of these absurd accusations of pimping," lawyer Henri Leclerc said in a statement Wednesday, adding that he planned to appeal to France's supreme court.

Strauss-Kahn denies wrongdoing in all the charges against him.

He is under fire about sex parties with prostitutes in the so-called Carlton Affair, named after a hotel in northern France at the center of the inquiry.

His lawyers argue that consorting with prostitutes is not illegal and that investigators have no grounds for pursuing him on the basis that his behavior could be construed as pimping, which is illegal.

Under French law, prosecution does not automatically lead to trial, but it often takes months or years before a decision is made.

In the United States, Strauss-Kahn's legal troubles ended within 18 months of a sexual-assault complaint filed by New York Sofitel hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo.

U.S. prosecutors dropped criminal charges in August 2011, saying they had worries about Guinea-born Diallo's credibility as a witness in court after discovering that she had lied in the past on tax and immigration documents. She opened civil proceedings that ended last week with a settlement for an undisclosed sum.

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