Head of IMF arrested and accused of sexual assault

[Magda Hassan]

Plus some curious tweeting from Naomi Klein here:
Sat night+wine+IMF head accused of sex assault+Twitter+me=dangerous

"Head of IMF arrested and accursed of sexual assault." http://nyti.ms/k8NdiD I could say stuff but won't.

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was taken off an Air France plane at Kennedy International Airport minutes before it was to take off for Paris on Saturday and arrested in the sexual attack of a maid at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, the authorities said. Enlarge This Image

Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse Getty Images

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, in April. He was arrested Saturday at Kennedy Airport.


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Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, who was widely expected to become the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, was apprehended by detectives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the first class section of the jetliner, and immediately turned over to detectives from the Midtown South Precinct, which covers the part of Manhattan where the hotel is, officials said.
The New York Police Department took Mr. Strauss-Kahn into custody, where he was "being questioned in connection with the sexual assault of a hotel chambermaid earlier this afternoon," Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the department's chief spokesman, said Saturday evening.
A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney's office said Mr. Strauss-Kahn had not yet been "formally charged" in the case and was not expected to be arraigned before a judge until later in the evening.
The arrest came at about 4:40 p.m., when two detectives from the Port Authority suddenly boarded Air France Flight 23, as the plane idled on the tarmac, said John P. L. Kelly, a spokesman for the agency.
"It was 10 minutes before its scheduled departure," Mr. Kelly said. "They were just about to close the doors."
Mr. Kelly said Mr. Strauss-Kahn was traveling alone and was not handcuffed during the arrest.
"He complied with the detectives's directions," Mr. Kelly said.
The Port Authority officers were acting on information from the Police Department, whose detectives had been investigating the assault of a female employee of the Sofitel New York, at 45 West 44th Street, in the heart of the theater district.
Mr. Strauss-Khan, a former French finance minister, had been expected to declare his candidacy soon, after three and a half years as the leader of the fund, which is based in Washington, where he was considered by many to have done a good job in a very difficult period of global economic strain, when the bank itself has become vital to the smooth running of the world and the European economy.
His time at the bank was tarnished in 2008 by an affair with a Hungarian economist who was a subordinate there. The fund decided to stand by him despite concluding that he had shown poor judgment in the affair. Mr. Strauss-Kahn issued an apology to employees at the bank and his wife, Anne Sinclair, an American-born French television journalist.
In his statement then, Mr. Strauss-Kahn said, "I am grateful that the board has confirmed that there was no abuse of authority on my part, but I accept that this incident represents a serious error of judgment." The economist, Piroska Nagy, left the fund as part of a buyout of nearly 600 employees instituted by Mr. Strauss-Kahn to cut costs.
In the New York case, Mr. Browne said it was about 1 p.m. on Saturday when the maid, a 32-year-old woman, entered to clean Mr. Strauss-Kahn's room.
"He came out of the bathroom, fully naked, and attempted to sexually assault her," Mr. Browne said.
At some point during the assault, the woman broke free, Mr. Browne said, and "she fled, reported it to other hotel personnel who called 911. When the police arrived, he was not there." Mr. Browne said it appeared that Mr. Strauss-Kahn left in a hurry. Investigators found his cellphone in the room, which he had left behind, he said.
He added: "We learned that he was on an Air France plane, and the plane was held and he was taken into custody."
Mr. Browne said an Emergency Medical Services ambulance arrived at the hotel to take the maid to Roosevelt Hospital for what Mr. Browne described as treatment for "minor injuries."
No matter the outcome of Saturday's arrest, it will likely throw the French political world into turmoil and the Socialist Party into an embarrassed confusion.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a leading member of the party, has been considered the front-runner for the next presidential election in France in May 2012. Opinion polls have shown him to be the Socialists' most popular candidate and running well ahead of the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, who leads the center-right party.
France has been waiting for Mr. Strauss-Kahn to decide whether to run for his party's nomination in a series of primaries, which would mean giving up his post as managing director of the fund.
The view in France was that if Mr. Strauss-Kahn wanted to run, he would have to make his intentions clear early this summer, and most politicians and analysts have been predicting that he would not be able to resist the chance to run the country.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn contested for the nomination five years ago, losing to Ségolène Royal, who ultimately lost a second-round runoff to Mr. Sarkozy. Mr. Sarkozy then arranged for Mr. Strauss-Kahn to get the I.M.F. job, partly to remove a popular rival from France's political landscape.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/nyregi...ml?_r=1&hp

[Peter Lemkin]

If true [not a set-up to discredit him], why would a multi-millionaire, who could pay for any high-class call-girl for less they they usually pay for dinner, try to rape someone, as a 'freebee'?! Sick people run the World and the IMF is certainly one of the sickest elements of it! :loco: Where do they get this human slime to run the machinery of destruction? Reminds me of the Third Reich's moral standards for leadership positions. We're getting 'there'....

....by the way, what is a 'Socialist' doing in the IMF....something's strange here.

[Magda Hassan]

Agreed Peter. The Sofitel isn't exactly top of the range either. Plenty of room service sex available from the concierge or any number of other avenues. Why risk it with the maid? On the other hand some men are self righteous idiots and he has form at work. But it is interesting that Sarkozy has been on some thing of a crusade against him recently and this may be just another front in that war. He may be being Assganged.

[Peter Lemkin]

Agreed Peter. The Sofitel isn't exactly top of the range either. Plenty of room service sex available from the concierge or any number of other avenues. Why risk it with the maid? On the other hand some men are self righteous idiots and he has form at work. But it is interesting that Sarkozy has been on some thing of a crusade against him recently and this may be just another front in that war. He may be being Assganged.

The police say there is evidence he quickly fled from his room to the flight [even leaving behind his mobile phone and other items of importance]....it begins to look all too convenient. Had he [for whatever pathological reason] started a forced attempt at a freebee, and found the woman unwilling, he'd likely just give her some 'hush money', say sorry (or issue a threat) and pack and leave....not run. IMO

[Magda Hassan]

He's been charged now. Sounds serious.

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, widely expected to run for the French presidency next year, has been charged with the sexual assault and attempted rape of a chambermaid at a New York hotel, police said. The charges included "criminal sexual act, unlawful emprisonment, attempted rape" and "assaulting a 32-year-old girl in a hotel room", Ryan Sesa, a police deputy spokesman, said.
Strauss-Kahn, a 62-year-old Socialist who had been leading French opinion polls for the 2012 elections, was escorted off an Air France flight just minutes before it was to leave John F. Kennedy International Airport, officials said.
"We took him into custody and we handed him over to the New York City police department," an official for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.
Authorities were investigating an alleged attack on a maid at the Sofitel New York hotel earlier in the day, police said.
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• IMF boss charged with attempted rape The Australian, 48 minutes ago
  
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A maid in the hotel alleged she had been assaulted by the IMF chief when he got out of his shower naked.
According to an account published by local media, the maid entered Strauss-Kahn's suite believing it was unoccupied.
As she worked in the foyer, he allegedly came out of the bathroom, fully naked, and attempted to sexually assault her, according to The New York Times.
According to the maid's account, the IMF chief grabbed her, pulled her into the bedroom and onto the bed and then locked the door.
She claims she managed to fight him off, but he dragged her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaulted her a second time.
MSNBC television reported that in the bathroom, Strauss-Kahn allegeldy forced the maid to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear.
At some point during the assault, the woman broke free and fled, reporting the incident to other hotel personnel and calling the 911 police emergency line.
According to police sources, Strauss-Kahn left the hotel room in a hurry leaving behind his mobile phone and personal effects.
Strauss-Kahn, a well-known figure on the French political scene popularly known by his initials DSK, has not officially thrown his hat into the ring to challenge centre-right President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's presidential race.
But the former French finance minister had been widely expected to stand, and polls out earlier Sunday before news of his arrest broke had put him narrowly ahead of the pack if he ran with 26 per cent of the vote.
In Washington, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
It was unclear when Strauss-Kahn bought the plane ticket, but he had been due to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Sunday to discuss an aid package for debt-laden Greece.
He was then due to attend a meeting of EU finance ministers on Monday and Tuesday in Brussels.
It is not the first time that the silver-haired political veteran, who is married to a high-profile journalist, has been tainted by 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 noted his inappropriate behaviour.
John Sheehan, director of security at Sofitel New York, said they are cooperating with the probe.
"The Sofitel is working very closely with the NYPD with their investigation," Sheehan said.
"The safety and security of our clients and team members are of the utmost priority to us."
Strauss-Kahn's stint at the helm of the IMF in Washington does not officially end until September 2012, several months after the scheduled date of France's vote.
But the French political world has been buzzing with speculation that he would end his tenure early to stand as the Socialist Party's candidate.
Strauss-Kahn became head of the International Monetary Fund in November 2007, pledging to push reforms of the 187-member country institution that helps oversee the global economy.http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/wor...6056280208

[Peter Lemkin]

Well, even if found not guilty and set-up, he likely won't win any elections....there are many ways to assassinate someone. Something just isn't right....about this story...methinks. I'd be interested to hear more about the 'maid' and who she knows.

[Ed Jewett]

IMF chief Strauss-Kahn caught in "Honey Trap"

By Mike Whitney

May 15, 2011 "Information Clearing House" --- I have no way of knowing whether the 32-year-old maid who claims she was attacked and forced to perform oral sex on IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is telling the truth or not. I'll leave that to the braying hounds in the media who have already assumed the role of judge, jury and Lord High Executioner. But I will say, the whole matter smells rather fishy, just like the Eliot Spitzer story smelled fishy. Spitzer, you may recall, was Wall Street's biggest adversary and a likely candidate to head the SEC, a position at which he would have excelled. In fact, there's no doubt in my mind that if Spitzer had been appointed to lead the SEC, most of the top investment bankers on Wall Street would presently be making license plates and rope-soled shoes at the federal penitentiary. So, there was plenty of reason to shadow Spitzer's every move and see what bit of dirt could be dug up on him. As it turns out, the ex-Governor of New York made it easy for his enemies by engaging a high-priced hooker named Ashley Dupre for sex at the Mayflower Hotel. When the news broke, the media descended on Spitzer like a swarm of locusts poring over every salacious detail with the ebullient fervor of a randy 6th-grader. Meanwhile, the crooks on Wall Street were able to breathe a sigh of relief and get back to doing what they do best; fleecing investors and cheating people out of the life savings.

Strauss-Kahn had enemies in high places, too, which is why this whole matter stinks to high-Heaven. First of all, Strauss-Kahn was the likely candidate of the French Socialist Party who would have faced Sarkozy in the upcoming presidential elections. The IMF chief clearly had a leg-up on Sarkozy who has been battered by a number of personal scandals and plunging approval ratings.

But if Strauss-Kahn was set up, then it was probably by members of the western bank coalition, that shadowy group of self-serving swine whose policies have kept the greater body of humanity in varying state of poverty and desperation for the last two centuries. Strauss-Kahn had recently broke-free from the "party line" and was changing the direction of the IMF. His road to Damascus conversion was championed by progressive economist Joesph Stiglitz in a recent article titled "The IMF's Switch in Time". Here's an excerpt:

"The annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund was notable in marking the Fund's effort to distance itself from its own long-standing tenets on capital controls and labor-market flexibility. It appears that a new IMF has gradually, and cautiously, emerged under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Slightly more than 13 years earlier, at the IMF's Hong Kong meeting in 1997, the Fund had attempted to amend its charter in order to gain more leeway to push countries towards capital-market liberalization. The timing could not have been worse: the East Asia crisis was just brewing a crisis that was largely the result of capital-market liberalization in a region that, given its high savings rate, had no need for it.

That push had been advocated by Western financial markets and the Western finance ministries that serve them so loyally. Financial deregulation in the United States was a prime cause of the global crisis that erupted in 2008, and financial and capital-market liberalization elsewhere helped spread that "made in the USA" trauma around the world....The crisis showed that free and unfettered markets are neither efficient nor stable." ("The IMF's Switch in Time", Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate)

So, Strauss-Kahn was trying to move the bank in a more positive direction, a direction that didn't require that countries leave their economies open to the ravages of foreign capital that moves in swiftly--pushing up prices and creating bubbles--and departs just as fast, leaving behind the scourge of high unemployment, plunging demand, hobbled industries, and deep recession.

Strauss-Kahn had set out on a "kinder and gentler" path, one that would not force foreign leaders to privatize their state-owned industries or crush their labor unions. Naturally, his actions were not warmly received by the bankers and corporatists who look to the IMF to provide legitimacy to their ongoing plunder of the rest of the world. These are the people who think that the current policies are "just fine" because they produce the results they're looking for, which is bigger profits for themselves and deeper poverty for everyone else.

Here's Stiglitz again, this time imparting the "kiss of death" to his friend Strauss-Kahn:

"Strauss-Kahn is proving himself a sagacious leader of the IMF.... As Strauss-Kahn concluded in his speech to the Brookings Institution shortly before the Fund's recent meeting: "Ultimately, employment and equity are building blocks of economic stability and prosperity, of political stability and peace. This goes to the heart of the IMF's mandate. It must be placed at the heart of the policy agenda."

Right. So, now the IMF is going to be an agent for the redistribution of wealth.... (for) "strengthening collective bargaining, restructuring mortgages, restructuring tax and spending policies to stimulate the economy now through long-term investments, and implementing social policies that ensure opportunity for all"? (according to Stiglitz)

Good luck with that.

Can you imagine how much this kind of talk pisses off the Big Money guys? How long do you think they'd put up with this claptrap before they decided that Strauss-Kahn needed to take a permanent vacation?

Not long, I'd wager.

Check this out from World Campaign and judge for yourself whether Strauss-Kahn had become a "liability" that had to be eliminated so the business of extracting wealth from the poorest people on earth could continue apace:

"For decades, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been associated among anti-poverty, hunger and development activists as the poster child of everything wrong with the rich world's fiscal management of the rest of the world, particularly of poor nations, with its seemingly one-dimensional focus on belt-tightening fiscal policies as the price of its loans, and a trickle-down economic philosophy that has helped traditional wealthy elites maintain the status quo while the majority stayed poor and powerless. With a world increasingly in revolution because of such realities, and after the global financial crisis in the wake of regulatory and other policies that had worked after the Great Depression being largely abandoned, IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has made nothing less than stunning observations about how the IMF and the world need to change policies.

In an article today in the Washington Post, Howard Schneider writes that after the 2008 crash led toward regulation again of financial companies and government involvement in the economy, for Strauss-Khan "the job is only half done, as he has been leading the fund through a fundamental rethinking of its economic theory. In recent remarks, he has provided a broad summary of the conclusions: State regulation of markets needs to be more extensive; global policies need to create a more even distribution of income; central banks need to do more to prevent lending and asset prices from expanding too fast. 'The pendulum will swing from the market to the state,' Strauss-Kahn said in an address at George Washington University last week. 'Globalization has delivered a lot . . . but it also has a dark side, a large and growing chasm between the rich and the poor. Clearly we need a new form of globalization' to prevent the 'invisible hand' of loosely regulated markets from becoming 'an invisible fist.'" (Link---http://wcampaign.org/issue.php?mid=625&v=y)

Repeat: "...a fundamental rethinking of economic theory".... (a greater) "distribution of income"...(more) "regulation of financial companies", "central banks need to do more to prevent lending and asset prices from expanding too fast".

Are you kidding me? Read that passage again and I think you'll agree with me that Strauss-Kahn had signed his own death warrant.

There's not going to be any revolution at the IMF. That's baloney. The institution was created with the clear intention of ripping people off and it's done an impressive job in that regard. There's not going to be any change of policy either. Why would there be? Have the bankers and corporate bilge-rats suddenly grown a conscience and decided to lend a helping hand to long-suffering humanity? Get real.

Strauss-Kahn broke ranks and ventured into no man's land. That's why he was set up and then crushed like a bug.

(Note: Strauss-Kahn has been replaced by the IMF's number 2 guy, John Lipsky, former Vice Chairman of the JPMorgan Investment Bank. How's that for "change you can believe in"?)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e28103.htm

[Peter Lemkin]

Before I read the post above [about his proposed IMF changes] I thought it was likely a Honey Trap; now I'm 100% sure! It's modeled on the Eliot Spitzer take-down. The police parading him in handcuffs was unnecessary and part of the script to destroy him....it is more than obvious. That maid, if there was a maid really attacked, was a plant - and an actor in a larger drama. Politics (sic) as usual. :kraka:

[Jan Klimkowski]

Anyone in need of a refresher on the Get Spitzer scam, can browse: Giulianni, Cheney and Abramoff All Used the Same Hooker Service as Spitzer.

[Peter Lemkin]

Anyone in need of a refresher on the Get Spitzer scam, can browse: Giulianni, Cheney and Abramoff All Used the Same Hooker Service as Spitzer.

I was watching live, via internet. Judge was a 'hanging Judge' and woman with no mercy for the man...IMO. She denied ONE MILLION $$$ bail, forfiiture of passport and ankle bracelet...its back to prison for 'da patsy.....until Friday.....when I predict he will be put in jail until trial........Spitzer, Gary Hart and hundreds of other men have had this 'routine' run on them...to ruin their political careers to turn the 'steering wheel to the far-Reich'.....one more name on that long, long international list..............


....'funny' thing that nothing happened to Cheney nor Giulianni.....having Reich-wing political views seems to grant magic immunity from misdeeds......ones that befoul others, even when they do not commit them.....but only get set up to have seemed as if they did..... [no one ever told the children that the 'magic Deep Political fairy' was a card-carrying fascist....]