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Strauss-Kahn to sue attempted rape accuser

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn plans to sue for slander a 32-year-old French woman who said she will file an attempted rape complaint against him, his lawyers said on Monday.

Published: 5 July 2011 09:57 CEST
Strauss-Kahn to sue attempted rape accuser
Tristane Banon in 2001

French journalist and writer Tristane Banon, who once branded Strauss-Kahn a “rutting chimpanzee”, indicated she would send “a complaint for attempted rape” against him to prosecutors, likely on Tuesday, her lawyer David Koubbi told the news magazine L’Express on its website.  

But Strauss-Kahn, who resigned from his post at the IMF after being charged with sexual assault in New York, fired back that he had taken note of Banon’s claims but dismissed them as “imaginary”, his lawyers Henri Leclerc and Frederique Baulieu told AFP in a statement.

They said they “were in the process of compiling a libel complaint against her.”

The prospect of a new criminal complaint against Strauss-Kahn came as the case in New York, where he was recently released from house arrest on charges of trying to rape a hotel maid, looked set to collapse after prosecutors revealed they had doubts about the credibility of his accuser.

Noting the developments in New York, Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said Banon’s complaint “comes at a time when the untruthful nature of the accusations he faces in the United States are no longer in any doubt.”

Koubbi told AFPTV that Banon “took that decision because she endured what she accuses Dominique Strauss-Kahn of and in France as elsewhere when you are a victim of an attempted rape, you must file a complaint.”

Banon herself told the L’Express website that “today, seeing Strauss-Kahn freed (from house arrest) then afterward dining in a fancy restaurant with friends, that makes me sick.”

In February 2007, Banon was a guest on a television chat show and recounted how a senior politician a few years before 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.

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.

Koubbi referred to the attack as taking place in 2003, although her mother has previously said the incident occurred in 2002.

Banon also says then Socialist Party chief Francois Hollande was aware of the accusations, as her mother has said, but on May 20th Hollande denied “ever knowing such grave facts” as Banon has claimed.

Before his arrest in New York, Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist heavyweight, polled as the person most likely to beat President Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 election.

But Koubbi denied the decision to move forward with a complaint now was driven by political motives or influenced by the unravelling of the New York case.

“Even if (the New York) case against Mr Strauss-Kahn turns out to be unfounded, ours is not. It is extremely solid and backed up,” L’Express quoted him as saying.

Kenneth Thompson, who is representing the hotel maid accuser in New York, applauded Banon’s decision to file a sexual assault complaint against Strauss-Kahn.

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