Solitary confinement for IMF chief

A French politician accused him of attacking other maids in previous stays at the same luxury hotel.

And in New York, prosecutors said they are working to verify reports of at least one other case, which they suggested was overseas.

Strauss-Kahn’s weekend arrest rocked the financial world as the IMF grapples with the European debt crisis, and upended French presidential politics.

Strauss-Kahn, a member of France’s Socialist party, was widely considered the strongest potential challenger next year to President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Making his first appearance on the sex charges, a grim-looking Strauss-Kahn stood slumped before a judge in a dark raincoat and open-collared shirt.

The 62-year-old, silver-haired Strauss-Kahn said nothing as a lawyer professed his innocence and strove in vain to get him released on bail.

The judge ruled against him after prosecutors warned that the wealthy banker might flee to France and put himself beyond the reach of US law like the filmmaker Roman Polanski.

“This battle has just begun,” defence attorney Benjamin Brafman told scores of reporters outside the courthouse, adding that Strauss-Kahn might appeal against the bail denial.

Strauss-Kahn is accused of attacking a maid who had gone in to clean his penthouse suite on Saturday afternoon at a luxury hotel near Times Square.

He is charged with attempted rape, sex abuse, a criminal sex act, unlawful imprisonment and forcible touching. The most serious charge carries five to 25 years in prison.

Strauss-Kahn, who has headed the international lending agency since 2007, was in New York on personal business and was paying his own way, so he cannot claim diplomatic immunity, the IMF said.

He could seek that protection only if he were conducting official business, spokesman William Murray said. The agency’s executive board met informally for a report on the charges against Strauss-Kahn, its managing director.

The French newspaper Le Monde, citing people close to Strauss-Kahn, said he had reserved the $3,000-a-night suite at the Sofitel hotel for one night for a quick trip to have lunch with his daughter, who is studying in New York.

The 32-year-old maid told authorities that she thought the suite was empty but that Strauss-Kahn emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down a hallway, pulled her into a bedroom and dragged her into a bathroom, police said.

He seized her breasts, tried to pull down her pantyhose, grabbed at her crotch and forced her to perform oral sex on him during the encounter at about noon, according to a court complaint.

She ultimately broke free, escaped the room and told hotel staffers what had happened, authorities said. She was treated at a hospital for minor injuries.

“The victim provided a very powerful and detailed account of the violent sexual assault,” assistant district attorney John “Ardie” McConnell said.

He added that forensic evidence may support her account. Strauss-Kahn voluntarily submitted to a forensic examination on Sunday night.

Mr Brafman said defence lawyers believe the forensic evidence “will not be consistent with a forcible encounter”.

Defence lawyers would not elaborate, but Mr Brafman said “there are significant issues that were already found” that make it “quite likely that he will be ultimately be exonerated”.

Prosecutors asked the judge to hold Strauss-Kahn without bail, noting that he lives in France, is wealthy, has an international job and was arrested on a Paris-bound plane at Kennedy Airport. He had left the Sofitel hotel before police arrived, leaving his mobile phone behind, and appeared hurried on surveillance recordings, authorities said.

At one point, Strauss-Kahn called the hotel “in a panic” about the phone, a law enforcement official said.

Hotel security officers had not found a phone, but they were instructed by NYPD investigators to set a trap by informing him they had it and asking where they could get it to him, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation had not been completed.

Strauss-Kahn told them he was about to board a flight – unknowingly tipping off authorities to his whereabouts, the official said.

Prosecutors said they could not force Strauss-Kahn’s return from France if he went there.

“He would be living openly and notoriously in France, just like Roman Polanski,” said chief assistant district attorney Daniel Alonso, referring to the film director long sought by California authorities for sentencing in a 1977 child sex case.

Swiss police arrested him in 2009, but he was freed last year when Switzerland declined to extradite him to the United States.

Defence lawyers suggested bail be set at one million US dollars and promised that the IMF managing director would remain in New York City.

His lawyers said Strauss-Kahn was not trying to elude police on Saturday: The IMF head rushed out of the hotel at about 12.30pm to get to a lunch date with a family member, then caught a flight for which he had long had a ticket, according to Mr Brafman and fellow defence lawyer William W. Taylor.

“This is not a case of someone who commits a crime, runs to the airport and jumps on the first available plane,” Mr Brafman said.

Still, Criminal Court Judge Melissa C. Jackson said the fact that Strauss-Kahn was on a plane when arrested “raises some concerns”. She ordered him jailed at least until a court proceeding on Friday.

Strauss-Kahn makes an annual tax-free salary as head of the IMF of $420,930, plus an annual “scale of living” allowance of $75,350, according to a 2007 IMF news release.

According to the 2000 biography Les Vies Cachees de DSK by Vincent Giret and Veronique Le Billon, Strauss-Kahn’s wife, Anne Sinclair, was one of France’s highest-paid TV journalists before she gave up her job to avoid a possible conflict of interest when her husband became a government minister in 1997.

The biography says Sinclair is also a wealthy heiress, whose grandfather Paul Rosenberg was a prominent modern art dealer before the Second World War.

French newspapers have inventoried the couple’s real estate holdings, which reportedly include a six-room apartment in Paris’ chic 16th arrondissement; a 240-square-metre apartment on the luxurious Place des Vosges; a home in Marrakech, and a house in Washington.

Strauss-Kahn will be held in protective custody in the city’s Rikers Island jail because of his high profile, said city Correction Department spokesman Stephen Morello.

Unlike some inmates, who share 50-bed barracks, Strauss-Kahn will have a single-bed cell and eat all his meals alone there. Also, when he is outside his cell, he will have a prison-guard escort.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for 31-year-old French novelist Tristane Banon said she will probably file a complaint alleging Strauss-Kahn sexually attacked her in 2002.

Lawyer David Koubbi told French radio RTL that Banon had not pressed her claim earlier because of “pressures” but would do so now because “she knows she’ll be taken seriously”.

Banon’s mother, Anne Mansouret, a regional Socialist official in Normandy, said she had advised her daughter at the time against pursuing her claim.

A French politician from a rival political party also alleged, without offering evidence, that Strauss-Kahn had victimised several maids during past stays at the Sofitel near Times Square.

The hotel issued a statement calling conservative lawmaker Michel Debre’s claims “baseless and defamatory”.

Sofitel management “has had no knowledge of any previous attempted aggressions,” the hotel said, adding that it had set up a hotline for workers to report incidents more than a year ago.

Mr McConnell, the assistant district attorney, said in court that New York authorities are working to verify at least one other case of “conduct similar to the conduct alleged”.

When the judge asked whether the potential other incident occurred in the United States, McConnell said he “believed that was abroad”.

Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said they had no immediate response to the allegations emerging from overseas.

In France, defenders of Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister who had topped the polls as a possible candidate in presidential elections next year, said they suspected he was the victim of a smear campaign.

The 187-nation IMF provides emergency loans to countries in severe distress and tries to maintain global financial stability.