Sex Case
IMF chief gets new bail hearing, mug shot released
(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-19 09:32
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NEW YORK - IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn for a second time will request release on $1 million cash bail on Thursday and placement under 24-hour house arrest while he awaits trial on charges of attempting to rape a hotel maid, his lawyers said.
The request by the global finance leader will call for him to be subjected to electronic monitoring, his lawyers said. He is being held in New York's notorious Rikers Island jail.
"Yes there will definitely be a bail hearing tomorrow," Manhattan District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Erin Duggan told Reuters.
A mug shot of Strauss-Kahn, 62, taken more than 24 hours after he was pulled from an plane and detained on Saturday, showed him exhausted, his eyes downcast and half-closed and wearing a rumpled, open-neck shirt.
The photograph may fuel outrage in France over how a man who had been viewed as a strong contender for the French presidency has been paraded before the cameras before he has had a chance to defend himself in court.
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The woman who Strauss-Kahn allegedly tried to rape, a 32-year-old widow from West Africa, testified on Wednesday before a grand jury and she was exhausted afterward, her lawyer said. The grand jury decides in secret whether there is enough evidence against Strauss-Kahn to formally press charges with an indictment.
"The proceedings are ongoing," the lawyer, Jeffrey Shapiro, said.
Strauss-Kahn's arrest has dashed his prospects to run for the French presidency in 2012 and raised broader issues over the future of the International Monetary Fund. Developing countries are questioning Europe's hold on the top IMF position, and jockeying to replace him has already begun -- even though he has not resigned.
IMF board officials have told Reuters they were waiting for Strauss-Kahn to be indicted, possibly on Friday, before they move to contact him to hear his views on his post.
Timeline Emerges
New details emerged on Wednesday about the sequence of events surrounding the alleged sexual attack on the maid.
Strauss-Kahn left the Sofitel near Times Square in Manhattan around 12:30 pm (1630 GMT) on Saturday and roughly an hour later, hotel security called police to report an alleged sexual assault, a law enforcement source said.
New York investigators are questioning why officials at the Sofitel waited an hour to call police after the IMF chief left the hotel in a hurry following the alleged assault.
He has been charged with attempted rape, sexual abuse, a criminal sexual act, unlawful imprisonment and forcible touching. If convicted, he could face 25 years in prison. The woman he is accused of assaulting is an asylum seeker from Guinea with a 15-year-old daughter.
In the only public hint of Strauss-Kahn's possible line of defense, his attorney Benjamin Brafman told his arraignment hearing on Monday that the evidence "will not be consistent with a forcible encounter."
Any trial could be six months or more away.
The United States, the IMF's biggest shareholder, said Strauss-Kahn was unable to carry on being chief of the global lender from a jail cell, whatever the legal outcome.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday called for an interim chief to be named, saying Strauss-Kahn "is obviously not in a position to run the IMF."
Chile's Central Bank President Jose De Gregorio told the Financial Times in an interview published on the paper's website that Strauss-Kahn should resign his post as IMF managing director.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Europe would naturally put forward a candidate to replace Strauss-Kahn if he were to step down.
Germany, which wants a European to keep the job, said the IMF should deal with its immediate leadership internally and that it is too early to discuss a successor to Strauss-Kahn.
French officials said John Lipsky, the IMF's American number two official whose term ends in August, would represent the Fund at next week's Group of Eight summit in France.
In Strauss-Kahn's absence, Lipsky is temporarily in charge of the IMF, which manages the world economy and is in the midst of helping euro zone states like Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
Europe's Traditional Right
China, Brazil and South Africa questioned Europe's traditional right to the top job. But Europeans said it makes sense for them to retain the post while the Fund plays such a crucial role in helping to ease the euro zone debt crisis.
A European has held the post of managing director since the IMF was created in 1945 and four of them have been French.
Emerging countries are starting to flex their muscles over who should succeed Strauss-Kahn, who had been expected to leave soon anyway to run for the French presidency.
South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and a senior Brazilian official, who asked not to be named, said the next chief should be from a developing country, pressing a case to give emerging economies a greater say in world affairs.
The opinion poll released in France also showed that 70 percent of Socialist sympathizers believed Strauss-Kahn was the victim of a plot. Most French media have dismissed conspiracy theories.
The poll findings highlight a cultural divide, with French Socialist politicians and commentators denouncing the treatment of Strauss-Kahn.
US media have criticized the French for a tradition of secrecy on politicians' sex lives and for showing more compassion for Strauss-Kahn than for the alleged victim, whose identity some French newspapers have published.
The French daily Liberation said the IMF chief had told its editors in off-record comments last month that he had just the right qualities to lead France, notably a calm manner, in contrast to conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.
"Today I fit with everything the French people want -- recognized competence, calm, international experience," he was quoted as having said at an April 28 meeting.
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is thought to be interested in the post but her prospects have been clouded by a decision this month by a Paris public prosecutor to recommend an inquiry into her role in awarding financial compensation to a prominent businessman in 2008.
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