FRENCH PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party has rejected allegations of a political plot to bring down former International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
The denial followed publication of a report by a US investigative journalist which has revived claims that Mr Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in New York was the result of a set-up.
The account by Edward Epstein, published by the New York Review of Books at the weekend, raised new questions over events in the hours leading up to Mr Strauss-Kahn’s arrest on sexual assault charges last May.
The criminal case against him was later abandoned, but the scandal cost him his post at the IMF and ended his hope of challenging Mr Sarkozy for the French presidency. Mr Strauss-Kahn admitted a sexual encounter with hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo took place, but maintained it was consensual. A civil case against him is still pending.
Making use of detailed records from the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan, including security camera footage, room keycard data and telephone records, Epstein’s report sets out a minute-by-minute account of what happened from the moment Ms Diallo first entered Mr Strauss-Kahn’s suite at the hotel to the moment when two New York police officers arrived.
The key points are:
People close to Mr Strauss-Kahn say he had been warned in the days leading up to his arrest that one of his Blackberry phones might have been tapped by his enemies. A friend of his working temporarily in the head office of the ruling UMP party in Paris told him that at least one of his private emails had been read in the office. The Blackberry remains missing.
Almost 90 minutes passed between Ms Diallo alerting colleagues to the alleged assault and the police being called. During this time, security cameras recorded a senior hotel employee and an unidentified man “high-fiving each other” and doing what looked like a “dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes”.
Contrary to Ms Diallo’s initial account, keycard records show she entered a neighbouring room (number 2820) on the VIP floor before and after the alleged assault in Mr Strauss-Kahn’s suite. The resident of that room has never been identified.
The article led to calls from Mr Strauss-Kahn’s supporters for a new investigation by a prosecutor, with a statement from “Club DSK”, a network that championed the socialist before his arrest, saying it “confirmed the possibility of a political trap”. This was strongly denied by UMP secretary-general Jean-François Copé, who said the claims by anonymous sources were a clumsy attempt at manipulation.
“It’s pure fantasy,” interior minister Claude Guéant told French television. “I read Epstein’s article. What does it say? That DSK lost his phone. Losing one’s phone does not mean there is a set-up.”
In a statement, the Accor hotel group – which owns the Sofitel chain – challenged the article’s account of two individuals seen celebrating for three minutes. “In reality, these facts lasted eight seconds, and there is no evidence of a ‘celebratory dance’,” the statement said, adding that the two employees “categorically denied this exchange had any link whatsoever with Mr Strauss-Kahn.”
In relation to room 2820, which Ms Diallo entered before and after the alleged assault, Accor said its records showed the guest in that suite had checked out more than an hour before the alleged assault. “The insinuation that the guest in room 2820 was involved in the incident is therefore false and without foundation,” it said.
The story drew sharply contrasting responses from lawyers representing Mr Strauss-Kahn and Ms Diallo.
William Taylor, who represented the Frenchman, said the possibility that his client had been the target of a politically-motivated campaign could not be excluded.
However, Douglas Wigdor, one of Ms Diallo’s representatives, said the claim of a plot “is as absurd as suspecting that Armstrong never walked on the moon”.