A Belgian brothel owner called “Dodo la Saumure”, orgies at luxury hotels and accusations of pimping against a former French presidential hopeful — it sounds like the plot to a sensationalist police drama, reports The Financial Times.
This week Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and 12 others face charges of “aggravated pimping as part of a group” for participating in high-level orgies with prostitutes.
The so-called Carlton Affair, which centres on allegations that businessmen and police officials in the northern French town of Lille supplied women for sex parties in Lille, Paris and Washington, has gripped and titillated the French establishment since details first emerged four years ago.
With the international economist and former French finance minister facing the possibility of a custodial sentence, the tale of hubris, power and sex, set to unfold in a Lille courtroom over the next few weeks, is expected to grip a nation famously blasé about the private lives of public figures.
The proceedings kicked off on Monday when the defendants, including Mr Strauss-Kahn, appeared before the judge. The day was concerned mainly with procedural questions. Mr Strauss-Kahn, who wore a dark suit and striped tie and was accompanied by his lawyer Henri Leclerc, is not expected to give evidence until the middle of next week.
Bernard Lemaire, the presiding judge, reeled off the names of the defendants and their lawyers to a packed courtroom. “You are accused of aiding and abetting the prostitution of seven persons between March 29 2008 and October 4 2011, and of hiring and encouraging the prostitution of these same persons,” Mr Lemaire told Mr Strauss-Kahn.
Known as DSK in France, the 65-year-old has admitted attending the “libertine” parties in Paris and Washington and having sex with women there. But he says he did not know some of them were prostitutes.