FORMER IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn will be questioned today by French police investigating a suspected hotel prostitution ring.
Police in Lille are probing a suspected prostitution ring in France and Belgium that has implicated police and other officials.
Police have questioned prostitutes who said they had sex with Mr Strauss-Kahn in 2010 and 2011 at a luxury hotel in Paris, a restaurant in the French capital and also in Washington DC, where he lived while he was head of the International Monetary Fund before resigning his position in May.
Two men with ties to Mr Strauss-Kahn have been put under preliminary investigation in France on charges including organising a prostitution ring and misuse of corporate funds.
Mr Strauss-Kahn’s name surfaced in the investigation last autumn and his lawyer has asked that Mr Strauss-Kahn be allowed to tell his side of the story. One of his lawyers said that the former French presidential hopeful never knew that the women at orgies he attended were prostitutes.
“He could easily not have known, because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you’re not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman,” Henri Leclerc told French radio in December.
Investigators are seeking to discover if prostitutes were paid using corporate funds from a large French construction company.
It is Mr Strauss-Kahn’s latest run-in with police over alleged sexual misconduct. He was charged by New York police last May with making a hotel maid perform oral sex, but prosecutors dropped the case after his accuser’s credibility was undermined.