Dominique Strauss-Kahn faces ‘gang rape’ inquiry

A French prosecutor has opened a preliminary investigation into allegations that former IMF chief and one-time French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn took part in a “gang rape” in the United States.

The allegations come from a Belgian prostitute who told police she was paid to attend a sex party at a Washington hotel on December 16, 2010, at which Strauss-Kahn and two of his associates subjected her to a violent sexual assault despite her repeated calls for them to stop.

Strauss-Kahn, 63, was placed under formal investigation along with two businessmen and a police officer in March over his alleged involvement in a prostitution ring while in charge of the International Monetary Fund. A charge that he attempted to rape a New York hotel maid was dropped last year, but the affair forced him to resign from the IMF and give up on his ambitions to contest the 2012 presidential elections in France.

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According to the Associated Press, Monday’s move by a prosecutor in the northern French city of Lille follows a request by investigating judges earlier this month to broaden the existing prostitution probe to examine the December 2010 rape claims.

The Belgian sex worker who has made the allegations against Strauss-Kahn has not yet filed a complaint. A second Belgian prostitute has called her account of events into question in an interview with French media, the BBC reports, while Washington police say they have checked their records for December 16 at the hotel in question, and found no reports detailing allegations of such activity.

In a statement released through his lawyers this month, Strauss-Kahn denied the accusations against him, saying he “absolutely contests having committed the slightest act of violence of any nature whatsoever,” according to the Agence France Presse. 

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