The leader of the International Monetary Fund and a possible candidate for president of France was pulled from an airplane moments before he was to fly to Paris and was being questioned Saturday by police in connection with the sexual assault of a hotel maid, officials said.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn was taken off the Air France flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport by officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and turned over to police Saturday afternoon, said Paul Browne, New York Police Department spokesman.
He was being questioned by the NYPD special victims office.
“He’s being arrested for a criminal sex act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment,” Browne said.
The 32-year-old woman told authorities that she entered Strauss-Kahn’s $3000-a-night suite at the luxury Sofitel hotel not far from Manhattan’s Times Square about 1 p.m. Saturday, and he attacked her, Browne said.
According to the account the woman provided to police, Strauss-Kahn emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down a hallway and pulled her into a bedroom, where he began to sexually assault her. She said she fought him off, then he dragged her into the bathroom, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear. The woman was able to break free again and escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened, authorities said. They called police.
When New York City police detectives arrived moments later, Strauss-Kahn had already left the hotel, leaving behind his cell phone, Browne said. “It looked like he got out of there in a hurry,” Browne said.
The NYPD discovered he was at the airport and contacted the Port Authority, who plucked Strauss-Kahn from first class on the Air France flight that was just about to leave the gate.
The maid was taken by police to a hospital and was being treated for minor injuries.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, took over as head of the IMF in November 2007. He was investigated in 2008 over whether he had an improper relationship with a subordinate female employee. The IMF board found his actions “regrettable” and said they “reflected a serious error of judgment.”
Strauss-Kahn, an economist and former member of the French National Assembly, won praise for his leadership at the IMF during the financial crisis of 2008 and the severe global recession that followed.
He had been viewed as a leading contender to run on the Socialist Party’s ticket to challenge the re-election of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Strauss-Kahn is a married father of four. His third wife, Anne Sinclair, is a New York-born journalist who hosted a weekly news broadcast in France in the 1980s.
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