Post date: Feb 26, 2013 2:45:28 PM
Disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn breaks long silence to slam kiss-and-tell novel by a former lover as 'despicable'.
PARIS, FRANCE (FEBRUARY 26, 2013) (REUTERS) - Disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn emerged from a Paris court on Tuesday (January 26) saying he was 'disgusted' by a book written by a former lover with whom he had a liaison last year, at a time when he was battling a string of sex scandals in France.
Strauss-Kahn spent the entire morning at Paris' main courthouse in support of his lawyers' bid to block publication of Belle et Bete, written by legal philosopher Marcela Iacup.The book, written as a novel, relates her relationship with Strauss Kahn during the first few months of last year, following his return to France after a U.S. court dropped sexual assault charges against him.
The title is a play on words between 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'Pretty and Stupid'.
With the exception of one carefully-controlled television interview on his return to Francein September 2012, 'DSK' has maintained an extremely low profile and has not made any public comment about the string of scandals that have beset him.
But on Tuesday, the former frontrunner for the presidency broke his silence with venom.
"I am completely disgusted by the despicable nature of this text and by the fact that it is completely untruthful in what it relates, as it is in the quotations that it attributes to me," he said on leaving a court hearing that is seeking to prevent the publication of the book.
"Beyond that, I am also horrified by the dishonest process that was used to produce this book. And that only for reasons of gain by those -- publishers, newspapers, and weeklies -- who trick their readers by trying to sell them something exclusively for profit," he said.
DSK fell from grace in May 2011, when he was arrested on suspicion of attempting to rape a New York hotel chambermaid. Prosecutors in the U.S. dropped the charges and he returned to France in September that year.
He returned to face accusations by at least one woman in France that he attempted to assault her but French judges decided not to proceed for lack of evidence. He remains under formal investigation over allegations of aggravated pimping linked to claims he was supplied with prostitutes by businessmen in the northern city of Lille who were trying to seek favour with him.