Strauss-Kahn questioned in France for 2nd day

[February 22, 2012]  PARIS (AP) -- French police interrogated former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn for a second day Wednesday in a probe into a suspected hotel prostitution ring in France and Belgium.

A French judicial source said Strauss-Kahn was held overnight at the police station in the northern city of Lille where he has been detained since Tuesday morning. The source spoke on condition of anonymity.

French law lets police question Strauss-Kahn for up to 96 hours with a judge's approval.

French police are probing a suspected prostitution ring that has implicated police and other officials. They have questioned prostitutes who said they had sex with Strauss-Kahn during 2010 and 2011 at a luxury hotel in Paris, a restaurant in the French capital and also in Washington, D.C., where he lived while working for the Washington-based IMF.

Strauss-Kahn is a one-time French presidential hopeful whose political chances were derailed by a sexual assault accusation in New York City and his subsequent resignation from the IMF in May. New York police said he made a hotel maid perform oral sex then dropped the charges when prosecutors said the maid's testimony was unreliable. Strauss-Kahn has said the sexual encounter was "inappropriate" but not violent.

In France, two men with ties to Strauss-Kahn have been put under preliminary investigation on charges including organizing a prostitution ring and misuse of corporate funds.

Strauss-Kahn's name surfaced in the investigation last fall and his lawyer has asked that his client be allowed to tell his side of the story. One of Strauss-Kahn's lawyers has said that his client 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 Europe 1 in December.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, has been married for two decades to journalist Anne Sinclair, who recently was named editor of the French version of the Huffington Post.

French newspapers have dubbed the prostitution investigation "The Carlton Affair" after the name of the expensive Lille hotel where some encounters took place.

Investigators are seeking to discover if prostitutes were paid using corporate funds from a large French construction company, Eiffage.

"If these parties and these trips across the Atlantic were being financed by a major French group for purposes of prostitution obviously that puts a lot of people in deep trouble because it is a misuse of corporate money," said Christopher Mesnooh, a legal expert not linked to the Strauss-Kahn case.

The case is unconnected to the now-dropped attempted rape accusations in New York. Despite prosecutors' doubts, the New York hotel maid still insists she was truthful about the encounter. She is pursuing claims against Strauss-Kahn in a civil lawsuit.

In a separate case last October, French prosecutors refused to pursue an allegation by a young French writer of attempted rape by Strauss-Kahn during an 2003 interview with him for a book she was writing when she was 23.

The Paris prosecutor's office said Strauss-Kahn admitted during questioning to actions amounting to sexual assault in the 2003 case but said it couldn't send the case to trial because it happened too long ago.

[Associated Press; By GREG KELLER]

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