1: 06 AM EDT by Karen Freifeld and Sandrine Rastello, May 15, 2011
May 15 (Bloomberg)-Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund who had regarded as a possible French presidential candidate next year, was pulled from an Air France flight in New York yesterday and for questioning about an alleged sexual assault, a spokesman for the police said.
New York Police Department spokesman Brian Sessa said, and the alleged incident took place in a Manhattan hotel Strauss-Kahn would probably be today after charged at night is held at a police precinct.Strauss-Kahn, 62, was scheduled to attend a meeting of European finance ministers in Brussels. The 16 May meeting will take place, as officials the possible increase in a 110-billion discuss (155-billion dollar) loan package to Greece amid concerns the country might not return to the markets in order to finance its debt next year. "This is terrible news for the Fund, at a time when its leadership to portray stability, wisdom and confidence," Bessma Momani, a professor in the Department of political science at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who specializes in the IMF and its policies, said in an e-mail.The New York Times reported that the incident occurred at the Sofitel New York, 45 West 44th Street, in Midtown Manhattan. The newspaper said that a female employee at the hotel reported the alleged attack.IMF spokesman William Murray had no immediate comment. Police said they didn't know immediately if Strauss-Kahn had hired a lawyer to be represented. She said he has no diplomatic immunity.French RaceStrauss-Kahn, a former French Minister of finance and member of the French opposition Socialist Party, has consistently been among the most popular possible candidates to contest the French presidential election, 2012, according to opinion polls.President Nicolas Sarkozy would have stood Strauss-Kahn by five percentage points in the first round of the presidential elections to vote if the election has taken place at the end of last month, a CSA poll for 20 minutes newspaper, BFM TV and RMC radio showed April 28. Strauss-Kahnat the IMF, whose term expires next year, in the past few months has refused to say whether he planned to run for President. The vote will take place in April and may 2012. This is the second time since he took the helm of the IMF in November 2007 that Strauss-Kahn allegations of misconduct has faced.In 2008 he had a relationship with Piroska Nagy, a female Economist at the IMF, which in August of that year, stop. A study by the IMF Board, released in October 2008, concluded that while he had made a "serious error of judgment", he should not be fired.Apologizes to FamilyStrauss-Kahn apologised for his employees and family, including his third wife, French television journalist Anne Sinclair, and four children from his previous marriages. "For Fund critics and challengers of Western leadership in international financial institutions, this is indicative of poor judgment and may further motivate them to call for serious changes in management," said Momani. repeated last month, officials of the Group of 24, including Brazil, China and Mexico, a call for "an open, transparent, merit-based process" for choosing the heads of the world bank and the IMF, "without nationality." The IMF work is traditionally held by a European while an American leads the World Bank. Strauss-Kahn took the helm of the IMF in November 2007, after his loss in the primaries of the French Socialist Party for the presidential elections of 2007. RelevanceStrauss-Kahn, which succeeded Spain's Rodrigo de Rato, has helped reshape the agency mission and restore its relevance. When he arrived, dropped its emergency aid loans up to $ 58.7 million in 2006 from $ 66.4 billion in 2002. Among his first steps there was about 400 jobs.The global financial panic caused by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008 restored Washington-based IMF relevance as its emergency aid loans rose to a record of 91.7 billion dollars last year from $ 1.1 billion in 2007. Strauss-Kahn got support of the Group of 20 to triple IMF resources, and the Group has in the past two years the Agency a host of new missions in order to prevent another crisis. The IMF helps the G-20 single from countries whose policies threaten global growth, and has also made proposals to strengthen the international monetary system.European Crisis More recently, he has an important role in the efforts to achieve the European debt crisis that began last year in Greece, with a promise to wear about a third of future bailouts in the region by the European Union. The IMF has co-financed support packages for Greece and Ireland. He was to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel today.The IMF approved under Strauss-Kahn, a plan that will China the third-strongest voice in the 187-member organization, founded in 1945, while the influence of Europe to make space for emerging countries to weaken.Strauss-Kahn has juggled career as an economics professor, lawyer and politician. He has a and a doctorate in economics at the University of Paris In 1986, he was elected to the National Assembly and served as Minister of industry from 1991 to 1993. He returned to office as Minister of finance under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 1997. He cut the French budget deficit below 3% in 1999, the level required for membership of the euro.In November 1999, he resigned as Finance Minister after magistrates began an investigation into financial irregularities in THIS LIST, a French student insurance group. The probe covered a claim that the company had paid him about $ 100,000 from 1994 to 1996 for legal work on a property deal that he never performed. Strauss-Kahn denied wrongdoing and was cleared by a court in Paris in November 2001.--Editors: Kevin Costelloe, Christopher Wellisz
Contact reporters on this story: Karen Freifeld in New York in kfreifeld@bloomberg.net; Sandrine Rastello in Washington on srastello@bloomberg.net
Contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz on cwellisz@bloomberg.net
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