Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers told reporters connected Tuesday that charges against him for his alleged engagement successful a prostitution ringing were “hollow, bare and overblown”.
There was “no superior evidence” against Strauss-Kahn, said Henri Leclerc, 1 of the 3 lawyers representing the disgraced erstwhile IMF boss. “If it was subjected to cross-examination the lawsuit would illness immediately.”
Judges handling the lawsuit are investigating allegations that Strauss-Kahn, 62, “helped, assisted oregon protected prostitution” – a transgression punishable by up to 20 years successful prison. In bid to found this, they volition question to beryllium that Strauss-Kahn knew that participants astatine orgies attended successful Paris and Washington were paid to beryllium there.
Prostitution itself is not illegal
In France, prostitution connected its ain is not amerciable unless it causes a nationalist disturbance. However, procuring for enactment is simply a punishable offence.
Central to the lawsuit against him is simply a bid of SMS messages sent from Strauss-Kahn’s phone, successful which helium mentions forthcoming soirées and the women involved. A root adjacent to the probe told Reuters that these messages could beryllium interpreted arsenic complicity with amerciable procurement of prostitutes.
"There's nary superior grounds to suggest that Dominique Strauss-Kahn knew that these women were paid," said Leclerc. “And adjacent if helium knew, each that tin beryllium proved is that it was thing different than mean relations with prostitutes. There is nary help, assistance of extortion of prostitution, conscionable mean enactment betwixt a prostitute and her client. There is nary crime.”
The lawyer maintained that “certainly, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has attended a definite fig of parties with women, libertine parties with pistillate friends and women who were friends of his friends."
'A transgression of lust'
Leclerc added: “You tin accidental what you similar astir that connected the motivation level, but that doesn't alteration the information that it's not against the transgression law. He is being reproached for a benignant of transgression of lust. He's being attacked implicit his libertine behaviour.”
After months of tribunal hearings, investigating judges placed Strauss-Kahn nether ceremonial probe connected Monday. This means – among different things - that helium is nary longer allowed to talk to the press.
Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said they would entreaty the court’s conditions, which see 100,000 euros bail, and would question to person the probe thrown retired completely.
Asked what Strauss-Kahn – known arsenic DSK successful France – risks from the probe successful the agelong run, Leclerc replied: “They volition driblet the charges oregon they volition acquit him. I person seldom been truthful definite of the result of a case."
Even if his lawyers succeed, Strauss Kahn’s woes volition not beryllium astatine an end. On Wednesday a civilian lawsuit against him is owed to unfastened successful New York brought by Nafissatou Diallo, the New York edifice maid who accused him of raping her successful 2011.
Criminal charges were dropped aft prosecutors decided Diallo was an unreliable witness, but it was excessively precocious to prevention the governmental vocation of the antheral who was erstwhile rated arsenic the astir fashionable imaginable campaigner successful the 2012 French statesmanlike election.
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