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Frenchwoman to sue DSK for attempted rape

A French woman will bring legal action this week for attempted rape against former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, her lawyer said Monday in an interview published online.

Published: 4 July 2011 17:34 CEST

Tristane Banon, a journalist and writer, “is lodging a complaint for attempted rape against Mr Dominique Strauss-Kahn”, the lawyer, David Koubbi, was quoted as saying by news magazine L’Express on its website.  

“I will send the complaint tomorrow, Tuesday July 5th, to the prosecutor, who will receive it on Wednesday morning.”  

The announcement came as Strauss-Kahn gained high hopes of being cleared in another sex assault case, which saw him arrested and charged with trying to rape a New York hotel maid and cost him his job as head of the IMF.  

Banon, 32, has alleged that Strauss-Kahn invited her to an apartment in 2003 promising to give her an interview, and instead pounced on her like “a rutting chimpanzee”.  

She made that allegation against the powerful politician in 2007 on television and in an interview with a news website, but had not so far made a formal complaint to authorities.  

The New York case meanwhile appeared close to collapse after prosecutors cast doubt on the accuser’s credibility, saying the maid was suspected of lying to police.  

Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest on Friday, prompting his allies in the French opposition Socialist Party to talk of his possible return to run for president.  

Before the New York scandal he polled as the person most likely to beat President Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 election.  

Koubbi denied the decision was driven by political motives or influenced by the New York case.  

“Tristane Banon really underwent what she is accusing Mr Strauss-Kahn of,” L’Express quoted him as saying. “Even if that case against Mr Strauss-Kahn turns out to be unfounded, ours is not. It is extremely solid and backed-up.”  

In February 2007, Banon was a guest on a television chat show and recounted how a senior politician had lured her to a virtually empty apartment in the guise of agreeing to give an interview and then assaulted her.  

In the broadcast version of Banon’s comments the name of the politician was bleeped out, but a year later Banon confirmed to the AgoraVox website that she was referring to Strauss-Kahn.  

“I put down the recorder straight away to record him. He wanted to hold my hand while he replied, because he told me ‘I wouldn’t be able to manage unless you hold my hand’,” she alleged in the Paris Premiere broadcast.  

“Then the hand went to my arm, then a bit further, so I stopped straight away,” she explained. “It finished very violently — as I told him clearly ‘No, No!’ — and we finished up fighting on the floor.  

“There wasn’t just a couple of blows. I kicked him, and he tried to unclip my bra, to open my jeans,” Banon alleged, adding that she eventually escaped and considered pressing charges before abandoning the idea.  

“I didn’t want to be for the rest of my days the girl who had had a problem with a politician,” she said.  

Banon’s mother, Socialist politician and blogger Anne Mansouret, confirmed to the news website Rue89, that she had advised her daughter at the time not to make a formal complaint, for fear of hurting her career in journalism.

ECONOMY

World unprepared for next financial crisis: ex-IMF chief Strauss-Kahn

The world is less well equipped to manage a major financial crisis today than it was a decade ago, according to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Published: 9 September 2018 14:08 CEST
World unprepared for next financial crisis: ex-IMF chief Strauss-Kahn
Former French Economy Minister and former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn , poses during a photo session in Paris on Thursday. Photo: JOEL SAGET / AFP
In an interview with AFP, the now-disgraced Strauss-Kahn — who ran the fund at the height of the 2008 financial meltdown — also said rising populism across the world is a direct result of the crisis. 
 
Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the IMF in 2011 after being accused of attempted rape in New York, although the charges were later dropped. He settled a subsequent civil suit, reportedly with more than $1.5 million.
 
Q: When did you become aware that a big crisis was brewing?
 
A: When I joined the IMF on Nov 1, 2007, it became clear quite quickly that things were not going well. That is why in January 2008, in Davos, I made a statement that made a bit of noise, asking for a global stimulus package worth two percent of each country's GDP. In April 2008, during the IMF's spring meetings, we released the figure of $1,000 billion that banks needed for their recapitalisation.
 
Q: Did the Bush administration grasp the danger of Lehman Brothers going bankrupt?
 
A: No, and that is why Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson decided not to save Lehman, because he wanted to make an example of it in the name of moral hazard. Like everybody else, he considerably underestimated the consequences. Allowing Lehman to go under was a serious mistake. Especially because only a week later they were forced to save the insurer AIG, which was much bigger.
 
Q: Ten years on, are we better equipped to deal with a crisis of such a magnitude?
 
A: No. We have made some progress, particularly in the area of banks' capital adequacy ratios. But that is not nearly enough. Imagine Deutsche Bank suddenly finding itself in difficulty. The eight percent of capital it has at its disposal are not going to be enough to solve the problem. The truth is that we are less well prepared now. Regulations are insufficient.
 
Q: How so?
 
A: After 2012-2013 we stopped talking about the need to regulate the economy, for example concerning the size of banks, or concerning rating agencies. We backtracked, which is why I am pessimistic about our preparedness. We have a non-thinking attitude towards globalisation and that does not yield positive results.
 
Q: Do we still have international coordination?
 
A: Coordination is mostly gone. Nobody plays that role anymore. Not the IMF and not the EU, and the United States president's policies are not helping. As a result, the mechanism that was created at the G20, which was very helpful because it involved emerging countries, has fallen apart. Ten years ago, governments accepted leaving that role to the IMF. I'm not sure it is able to play it today, but the future will tell.
 
Q: Do you believe that Donald Trump's election is a consequence of the crisis?
 
A: I believe so. I'm not saying that there was a single reason for Trump's election, but today's political situation is not unconnected to the crisis we lived through, both in the US with Trump and in Europe.
 
Q: Connected how?
 
A: One of the consequences of the crisis has been completely underestimated, in my opinion: the populism that is appearing everywhere is the direct outcome of the crisis and of the way that it was handled after 2011/2012, by favouring solutions that were going to increase inequalities.
 
Quantitative easing (by which central banks inject liquidity into the banking system) was useful and welcome. But it is a policy that is basically designed to bail out the financial system, and therefore serves the richest people on the planet.
 
When there's a fire, firemen intervene and there is water everywhere. But then you need to mop up, which we didn't do. And because this water flowed into the pockets of some, and not of everyone, there was a surge in inequality.
 
By AFP's Antonio Rodriguez