IMF managing director arrested, accused of sexual attack

[Jeff]

IMF Head Is Arrested and Accused of Sexual Attack

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was taken off an Air France plane at Kennedy International Airport minutes before it was to take off for Paris on Saturday and arrested in the sexual attack of a maid at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, the authorities said.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, who was widely expected to become the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, was apprehended by detectives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the first class section of the jetliner, and immediately turned over to detectives from the Midtown South Precinct, which covers the part of Manhattan where the hotel is, officials said.

The New York Police Department took Mr. Strauss-Kahn into custody, where he was “being questioned in connection with the sexual assault of a hotel chambermaid earlier this afternoon,” Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said Saturday evening.

...

In the New York case, Mr. Browne said it was about 1 p.m. on Saturday when the maid, a 32-year-old woman, entered to clean Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s room.

“He came out of the bathroom, fully naked, and attempted to sexually assault her,” Mr. Browne said.

At some point during the assault, the woman broke free, Mr. Browne said, and “she fled, reported it to other hotel personnel who called 911. When the police arrived, he was not there.” Mr. Browne said it appeared that Mr. Strauss-Kahn left in a hurry. Investigators found his cellphone in the room, which he had left behind, he said.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/nyreg ... ml?_r=1&hp

Naomi Klein tweets: Sat night+wine+IMF head accused of sex assault+Twitter+me=dangerous

[Peachtree Pam]

This has caused a political earthquake in France: DSK highly favoured to defeat Sarkozy in next election. More details here

Top French pol Dominique Strauss-Kahn hauled off plane at JFK, accused of assaulting Manhattan maid



Sunday, May 15th 2011, 4:00 AM
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, chief of the International Monetary Fund, was 'arrested for a criminal sex act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment,' a top NYPD spokesman said.

The chief of the International Monetary Fund - a Frenchman nicknamed "the great seducer" - was dragged off a flight at Kennedy Airport Saturday after a Manhattan hotel maid accused him of sexual assault.

Port Authority cops hauled Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 62, from the first-class cabin of Paris-bound Air France Flight 23 moments before its 4:40 p.m. takeoff, cops said.

Strauss-Kahn, a top presidential contender in France who is married to a New York-born journalist, is "being arrested for a criminal sex act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment," top NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

The 32-year-old Sofitel hotel maid provided a terrifying account of the attack to cops.

At about 1 p.m., she walked into Strauss-Kahn's $3,000-a-night-suite - Room 2806 - at the posh W. 44th St. hotel, thinking it was empty.

Strauss-Kahn emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down the hallway in his suite and yanked her into a bedroom, where he sexually assaulted her, the maid told police.

She fought him off, but he dragged her into the bathroom, forced her to perform oral sex and tried to peel off her panties.

At one point, he tried to lock the suite's door.

The woman escaped, scampered out of the room and alerted a hotel staffer, who called 911, according to cops.

The frisky Frenchie high-tailed it out of the hotel to the airport before cops arrived, leaving his cell phone and other personal items behind, police said.

"It looked like he got out of there in a hurry," Browne said.

The maid was taken by ambulance to Roosevelt Hospital and treated for minor injuries and released, police said.

An army of cops and detectives were seen milling about on the hotel's 28th floor last night.

Strauss-Kahn, who had been running well ahead of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in opinion polls, has reportedly hired prominent New York lawyer Benjamin Brafman and was not speaking to investigators.

This is not the first time the playboy pol has been embroiled in a sex scandal.

Three years ago, Strauss-Kahn was accused of having a fling with a former underling at the Davos international forum.

The affair emerged after the woman's furious husband, a senior Argentine economist named Mario Blejer, claimed Strauss-Kahn had seduced his Hungarian wife, Piroska Nagy, an IMF staffer at the time.

The embarrassing claims prompted Strauss-Kahn to issue an apology saying, "I accept that this incident represents a serious error of judgment."

Even before the incident, Strauss-Kahn had been dubbed "un grand seducteur" because of his reputation as a free-wheeling ladies man.

Twice divorced, Strauss-Kahn is married to French TV journalist Anne Sinclair and has four children.

No one answered the door at Strauss-Kahn's two-story, red brick mansion in Washington, D.C.'s posh Georgetown neighborhood last night. A black BMW SUV with diplomatic plates sat in the driveway.

A spokesman for the IMF said the organization had no immediate comment on reports of Strauss-Kahn's arrest.

He is not protected by diplomatic immunity, sources said.

Hours before he was pulled from the flight, a close Socialist Party ally claimed Strauss-Kahn was the target of a smear campaign by Sarkozy.

The ex-French finance minister is reportedly preparing legal action over media reports saying he enjoys a lavish lifestyle.

According to one report, Strauss-Kahn spends huge sums of cash on expensive suits from a luxury tailor in Washington known to serve President Obama.

Strauss-Kahn, who has yet to say if he will run for French president, would have to quit his IMF post to do so.

His arrest was seen as a devastating blow to his presidential aspirations.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crim ... _maid.html

[8bitagent]

Do we need any more proof that the elites of the world(call them the nwo, bilderbergers, ptb, "they", globalists, etc) are evil psychopaths? After reading Franklin, nothing seems surprising anymore.

[vanlose kid]

Update: DSK Now In Police Custody; IMF Head Dragged Off A Plane, Arrested Following Hotel Maid Allegations Of Forced Head
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/14/2011 19:10 -0400

Update 2: DSK is now in police custody:

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was taken into custody on Saturday at JFK airport in New York and was being questioned in regard to a sexual assault, a New York police spokesman told Reuters.

Spokesman Paul Browne said the woman who filed the complaint against Strauss-Kahn, 62, was a 32-year-old chambermaid who fled the room after the incident.

Strauss-Kahn, a possible Socialist candidate in the French presidential election next April, left the hotel after the incident and boarded an Air France aircraft scheduled to depart for Paris, the police spokesman said.

"The NYPD realized he had fled, he had left his cell phone behind," Browne said. "We learned he was on an Air France plane. They held the plane and he was taken off and is now being held in police custody for questioning."

Browne said Strauss-Kahn had not been charged.

Police said the alleged incident took place at the upscale Sofitel hotel on West 44th Street near Times Square.

The chambermaid "was brought by EMS (emergency medical services) to the Roosevelt Hotel, where she was treated for minor injuries," Brown said.

Strauss-Kahn took over the International Monetary Fund in November 2007. Before that, he was a member of the French National Assembly and a professor of economics at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris.

The IMF declined to comment and board officials said they had not been informed officially of the incident.

In October 2008, Strauss-Kahn apologized for "an error of judgment" in an affair with a subordinate, but denied he had abused his position.

Strauss-Kahn apologized to employees, the woman he had the affair with, Piroska Nagy, and his wife, French television personality Anne Sinclair, for the trouble it had caused.

Update 1: Strauss Khan to be taken to Police Service Area 5 at 221 East 123rd Street

If there was any threat that the IMF would launch an SDR alternative to the USD, it is all over now. According to the NYPost, IMF head Dominique Strauss-Khan (no Bob Pisani, it is not a she) was just arrested on board the first class cabin (thank you taxpayers) of a New York-Paris flight as it was about to take off. And here is where the story gets surreal: "Around noon today, a maid at the hotel [the Sofitel by Times Square] knocked on the door of Strauss-Khan’s room. After letting the maid in, Strauss-Khan allegedly threw the maid on the room’s bed and forced her to perform oral sex on him, said police sources. Strauss-Khan let the maid leave — and soon afterward, headed off to Kennedy Airport for his flight to Paris." Of course this will not be the first sexual misconduct for the head of the world's global pseudo bail out organization: as a reminder back in 2008 the IMF hired a law firm to investigate whether its chief had an improper relationship with a female employee, Piroska Nagy. Back then he got off. This time he won't (even though he did... in a way), and it appears that the IMF is about to lose its head, meaning the fate of literally unlimited bailout funding is now up in the air. Also, it appears that being head of major bureaucracy does not automatically mean getting head on an ad hoc, and involuntary basis. Lastly, we are stunned it was not Herman Von Rompuy or G-Pap on the receiving end.

More from the Post:

His arrest tonight could force him to postpone a planned meeting in Berlin on Sunday with German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Strauss-Khan, a leader of France’s Socialist Party, is the leading rival to President Nicholas Sarkozy in the 2012 election.

Sarkozy was said in a news report yesterday to have begun a smear campaign against his rival that focused on his lavish lifestyle — including Strauss-Khan’s purchase of suits from the same tailor who clothes President Obama.

But Strauss-Khan seems able to find trouble on his own. In 2008, he publicly admitted to "an error of judgment" for having an affair with an IMF subordinate.

In France’s 2007 vote, Strauss-Khan lost the Socialist Party nomination to Segolene Royal, who in turn fell to defeat against Sarkozy, leader of the right-wing Union for a Popular Movement.

But Sarkozy, who still sees Strauss-Khan as his likeliest electoral rival, is believed in France to have maneuvered him out of France by backing him to head the Washington-based International Monetary Fund.

Strauss-Khan is married to New York-born Anne Sinclair, a leading French TV journalist.

Naturally, being in charge of the IMF requires one to be not only a sexual deviant, but a thief:

[Strauss-Khan] was Minister of Economy and Finance from 1997 to 1999, when he resigned to battle charges he was paid for consulting work he never did. But judges decided he really did the work, and prosecutors were forced to admit they had no evidence of fraudulent motive.

Next up: we expect a letter from the IMF disclosing how the world will end if charges are pursued and if, heaven forbid, the IMF head is thrown in jail.

In the meantime, the website of the Smoking Gun must be on fire with one million bored Burssels bureaucrats awaiting the release of the IMF head's mugshot.

Lastly, here is an advance preview of the statement to be released by the IMF head (no pun intended): "If questioned about this matter in the future, I will simply refer the questioner back to this release."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/imf-he ... my-charges

*

IMF chief charged with sex attack in New York hotel
By Christine Kearney and Catherine Bremer

NEW YORK/PARIS | Sun May 15, 2011 6:58am EDT

NEW YORK/PARIS (Reuters) - IMF chief and possible French presidential contender Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested and charged on Sunday with sexual assault, including an attempted rape, on a hotel maid in New York City.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, a key player in the response to the 2007-9 global financial meltdown and in Europe's debt crisis, was taken off an Air France plane about to leave for Paris from John F Kennedy International Airport on Saturday.

One of his lawyers, Benjamin Brafman, told Reuters that the chief of the International Monetary Fund, the main overseer of the global economic system, "will plead not guilty."

The news rocked France, where latest opinion polls ranked Socialist Strauss-Kahn as front-runner for the nation's presidential election next April and May.

"All this is completely astounding, immensely troubling and distressing. If the facts prove true ... it's something degrading for all women. It's terrible for the image of France," said Francois Bayrou, a centrist opponent of Strauss-Kahn.

The IMF declined to comment and IMF board officials told Reuters they had not been informed officially of the incident.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said her rival's presidential hopes had been crushed. Strauss-Kahn and Le Pen have led recent opinion polls ahead of conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.

New York police spokesman Paul Browne said Strauss-Kahn was arrested at 2:15 a.m. on Sunday on charges of criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment.

"We must wait until things settle and see if it's true or a provocation, one of Strauss-Kahn's French-based lawyers, Leon Lef Forster, said. "We must be especially careful not to get into a media circus and we must wait until things are clear."

A 32-year-old maid filed a sexual assault complaint after fleeing the $3,000-a-night hotel suite at the Sofitel in Times Square where the alleged incident occurred around 1 p.m. on Saturday, Browne said.

Strauss-Kahn appeared to have fled the hotel after the incident, the police spokesman said.

Browne told Reuters: "She told detectives he came out of the bathroom naked, ran down a hallway to the foyer where she was, pulled her into a bedroom and began to sexually assault her, according to her account.

"She pulled away from him and he dragged her down a hallway into the bathroom where he engaged in a criminal sexual act, according to her account to detectives. He tried to lock her into the hotel room."

Strauss-Kahn does not have diplomatic immunity, Browne said. He is expected to be brought before a state court on Sunday.

According to New York state law, a criminal sexual act carries a potential sentence of 15-20 years, the same as attempted rape. Unlawful imprisonment carries a potential sentence of three to five years.

IMPACT ON IMF
The allegation is a major embarrassment to the IMF, which has authorized billions of dollars in lending programs to troubled countries and has played a major role in the euro zone debt crisis.

It follows a statement on Thursday that the IMF's No. 2, John Lipsky, plans to step down in August when his term ends.

Popularly known by his initials DSK, the IMF managing director had been expected to declare by late June if he would run for president of France. The latest opinion polls ranked him as a clear winner over conservative incumbent Sarkozy.

"The case and the charges ... mark the end of his campaign and pre-campaign for the presidency and will most likely prompt the IMF to ask him to leave his post," National Front leader Le Pen told i-Tele television.

Conservative Trade Minister Pierre Lellouche said: "I think we have to grant DSK the presumption of innocence. If all this were true it would be damning."

Even Strauss-Kahn's political allies were pessimistic.

"The most likely outcome is that this case will stick and even if he pleads not guilty, which he may be, he won't be able to be candidate for the Socialist primary for the presidency and he won't be able to stay at the IMF," said prominent Socialist Jacques Attali.

If Strauss-Kahn were out of the race, leading candidates for the Socialist presidential ticket include party leader Martine Aubry, left-wing veteran Francois Hollande and Segolene Royal, the candidate beaten by Sarkozy in 2007.

PLANE HELD AT JFK
In New York, police spokesman Browne said: "The NYPD realized he had fled, he had left his cell phone behind. We learned he was on an Air France plane. They held the plane and he was taken off and is now being held in police custody for questioning."

After being removed from the aircraft's first-class section, he was taken to the police department's Special Victims Unit in Manhattan, known to viewers of a hit U.S. television show based on its work. The woman, who has not been named, was treated in hospital for minor injuries, Browne said.

Strauss-Kahn was on his way to Europe for a meeting on Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the European debt crisis, and then was to attend a euro zone finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday.

Strauss-Kahn took over the IMF in November 2007 for a five-year term scheduled to end next year. Before that, he was a French finance minister, member of the French National Assembly and a professor of economics.

He has faced controversy before.

In October 2008, he apologized for "an error of judgment" for an affair with a female IMF economist who was his subordinate. An inquiry cleared him of harassment and abuse of power, although he was warned by the fund's board of member countries against further improper conduct.

Strauss-Kahn apologized to the woman, Piroska Nagy, and his wife, French television personality Anne Sinclair, as well as to IMF employees for the trouble he had caused.

Since taking over the IMF, he has won praise for putting the fund at the center of global efforts to cope with the global financial meltdown.

He introduced sweeping changes to ensure that countries swamped by the financial collapse had access to emergency loans, and was pivotal in brokering bailouts for Iceland, Hungary, Greece, Ireland, and recently Portugal.

He has overseen changes that have given emerging market countries, such as China, India and Brazil, greater voting power in the IMF, and weighed into thornier issues by urging China to let its currency rise in a dispute with the United States.

Lipsky's planned departure and now Strauss-Kahn's detention raise questions about a possible IMF leadership vacuum.

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton, Noeleen Walder, Catherine Bremer and John Irish; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Peter Millership)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/ ... 9F20110515

*

IMF Investigates Chief Strauss-Kahn Over Relationship (Update1)
By Glenys Sim and Kim-Mai Cutler - October 18, 2008 12:33 EDT

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn is being investigated for possible abuse of his position in connection with a sexual relationship with a subordinate, the fund said.

The investigation focuses on Strauss-Kahn's relationship with Piroska Nagy, wife of former Argentine central bank President Mario Blejer, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Hungarian-raised Nagy was a senior official in the IMF's Africa department at that time, the newspaper reported.

``With my full support, the IMF is examining an incident which occurred in my private life in January, 2008,'' Strauss- Kahn, 59, said in a statement e-mailed today by fund spokesman William Murray. ``At no time did I abuse my position as the Fund's Managing Director.''

The investigation may distract Strauss-Kahn and the Washington-based agency's management as they attempt to address the global financial crisis. It takes place 15 months after World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz quit less than halfway through his five-year term amid a furor over securing a pay raise for his companion.

``If this turns out to become a serious issue it comes at a terrible time for the IMF,'' said Sebastian Mallaby, Washington- based director of geoeconomic studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a policy research group. ``After years of being on the sidelines, it is starting to play a role.''

An allegation concerning improper behavior of a personal nature on the part of the managing director came to the attention of the Fund's Executive Board in the middle of this year, according to IMF spokesman Murray. All allegations, particularly ones relating to senior management, are ``taken extremely seriously,'' he said.

Law Firm Hired
Strauss-Kahn began approaching Nagy about an affair in December 2007, the Journal reported, citing several individuals familiar with the matter. The two exchanged e-mails about a possible intimate relationship, which commenced early this year during a conference in Europe, the individuals were cited as saying.

Shortly afterwards, Nagy's husband found e-mail evidence of the affair and the relationship apparently ended, the Journal said, citing the people familiar. Blejer, an expert on financial stability, previously has worked for the IMF and Bank of England, as well as the Argentine central bank.

The IMF has retained the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP to conduct the investigation, the Journal said. The results will be presented to the Fund's Executive Board by the end of this month, Murray said.

Strauss-Kahn is married to Anne Sinclair, a former French television news presenter and media executive. He has run the IMF since November 2007.

IMF Role
The IMF's role in addressing the credit crunch is increasing as bank lending and investment to emerging market economies is pulled back. The Fund may soon make credit available to Iceland, Ukraine and Pakistan.

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Oct. 15 that the IMF has to be revamped to take account of global financial markets and that better transparency and early warning systems are needed to prevent future crises.

European Union leaders have called for an overhaul of the global financial system, which was based upon the 1944 Bretton Woods accord that established institutions including the IMF.

The Wolfowitz controversy was sparked in April 2007 by staff complaints over his involvement in arranging a 36 percent raise for companion Shaha Riza in 2005, shortly after he took over at the Washington-based World Bank.

To contact the reporter for this story: Glenys Sim in Singapore at gsim4@bloomberg.net; Kim-Mai Cutler in London at kcutler@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... refer=home

*

[Peachtree Pam]

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: who will succeed him?

Even before Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest in New York, it was clear that the International Monetary Fund would soon be looking for a new managing director. The signs were that "DSK" – as he is known at the fund's headquarters on 19th Street in Washinton DC – was planning for the French presidency next year.

The accusations against Strauss-Kahn mean he may now be leaving the IMF earlier than expected and with his reputation tarnished, but ironically he does so at a time when the fund is in better shape than it has been for some years.

The IMF suffered from three big problems in the period before the former French finance minister took over in the autumn of 2007: it had been ideologically wedded to the free-market philosophy of financial liberalisation that caused the world's banking system to implode; it had suffered from weak leadershipp; and it was short of money.

Strauss-Kahn moved the fund in a more progressive direction. There were admissions that the fund's failure to spot the crisis before his arrival had been caused by "group think". It was accepted that countries facing speculative pressure were justified in using capital controls to defend themselves, an anathema during the high pomp of neo-liberalism known as the Washington consensus.

The fund's coffers were also replenished, in part due to the funding organised by Gordon Brown at the London G20 summit in April 2009 and in part by the sale of the IMF's gold reserves. There is now a war chest for the IMF to deploy in the event that the sovereign debt crisis affecting the peripheral countries of the eurozone worsens.

Even so, Strauss-Kahn's revamp of the IMF has been partial and is still very much a work in progress. The traditional tough conditions have been imposed on Greece and Ireland in exchange for financial help from the fund, the stranglehold of the big developed nations on decision making remains despite some modest changes to governance that give developing countries more of a say and it is questionable whether the willingness to intervene to smooth out the global imbalances between creditor and debtor nations is more than skin deep.

Crucially, that will depend on who follows Strauss-Kahn as managing director. In a gentleman's agreement that dates back to the founding of the fund and its sister organisation, the World Bank, at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, the Europeans have chosen the head of the fund while Washington has appointed the president of the bank.

Developing countries complained bitterly about this carve up and the next managing director of the fund should be chosen by an open and transparent process. However, the same rule was in force when Strauss-Kahn was appointed, the fourth Frenchman to hold the post. Were a prominent European candidate with the right credentials put forward, they would still have a good chance of securing the job, given the voting structure of the fund's board.

In theory, Brown would be the obvious European choice to continue Strauss-Kahn's work. Brown chaired the IMF's keep policy committee for almost a decade when he was chancellor and believes the fund should actively intervene to tackle poverty and make the global economy less unstable. Despite being handed around European countries on a "buggins's turn" basis since the second world war, a Briton has never run the IMF.

To get the job, however, Brown would need the support of David Cameron, something the prime minister has said publicly would not be given. The chances, therefore, are that the fund's next boss will be from the developing world, although the candidate will still have to be acceptable to the major shareholders – the US and the big European countries. That may result in the selection of a central bank governor or finance minister with orthodox views, on the grounds that they will be a safe pair of hands.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... -imf/print

[vanlose kid]

Greek Bailout Money Is In Jeopardy As The IMF's Departing John Lipsky, Former JPM Chief Economist, Is In Temporary CommandSubmitted by Tyler Durden on 05/15/2011 10:38 -0400


It turns out that the meeting that DSK was rushing to (in just a bit of a rush, without his cell phone), was a critical one for the future of Greece. Per the AP: "The arrest of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn means a key participant will be missing at a European meeting considering whether to give Greece billions more in financial help." Does this mean that all Greek bailout talk is put on hold? As a result the headless (no pun intended) IMF is forced to promote its second in command, John Lipsky, previously chief economist of JP Morgan, to the rank of acting managing director, even as "separately, spokeswoman Caroline Atkinson said the fund remains fully functioning and operational despite the arrest of the fund's chief executive." What is funny is that it was just yesterday that Lipsky announced he was stepping down in August. What happens to the world's pseudo-bailout organization come September, when its top two officers are gone, is anyone's guess.

From AP:

Strauss-Kahn was to hold talks Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and join European finance ministers on Monday in Brussels. That won't be happening since he was arrested in New York City this weekend on suspicion of sexual assault on a hotel maid.

Ministers from the 17 countries that use the common euro currency are talking about whether they have to give Greece more help in paying its debts. Greece already received a euro110 billion ($157 billion) bailout package from the European Union and the IMF last year.

The International Monetary Fund says it "remains fully functional" despite the arrest.

And from Dow Jones:

John Lipsky is currently acting managing director of the International Monetary Fund, as the current head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is in police custody in New York following his arrest on attempted rape charges, a fund official said Sunday.

Separately, spokeswoman Caroline Atkinson said the fund remains fully functioning and operational despite the arrest of the fund's chief executive.

Lipsky, technically the first deputy managing director, was effectively put in the role when the fund chief went to New York on private business, the first official said.

The fund said early Sunday morning by email that Strauss-Kahn had retained his own private lawyer to deal with the case.

"The IMF has no comment on the case; all inquiries will be referred to his personal lawyer and to the local authorities," spokeswoman Caroline Atkinson said.

[from the comments]


by uno
on Sun, 05/15/2011 - 10:42
#1275969

from the front page of the imf.org regarding the rapist:

"The IMF remains fully functioning and operational."

NO IT'S NOT

by uno
on Sun, 05/15/2011 - 10:50
#1276000

also from their website

John Lipsky, an American, has been First Deputy Managing Director since September 2006. Before coming to the IMF, he worked for JPMorgan Investment Bank.

by goldfish1
on Sun, 05/15/2011 - 11:05
#1276037

IMF is forced to promote its second in command, John Lipsky, previously chief economist of JP Morgan

Motive enough.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/greek- ... ry-command

*

[anothershamus]

So Sarkozy is a ultra right dude and this guy is the front runner and a socialist, time to preempt the vote and leave the left hanging? Does anyone else smell SET-UP?

(via Of Goats and Men, http://ofgoatsandmen.blogspot.com/2011/ ... ident.html}

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/15/us-france-strausskahn-idUSTRE74E0HS20110515

Strauss-Kahn, France's would-be president

By Brian Love

PARIS | Sun May 15, 2011 4:41am EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, facing sexual assault charges in New York, was the front-runner in the latest opinion polls to win next year's presidential election in France and replace incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

The 62-year-old Socialist, who served as French finance minister in the late 1990s, left for Washington in late 2007 to head the International Monetary Fund, just as the global economy was hit by the worst downturn since World War Two.

The polls have consistently shown Strauss-Kahn, who has yet to officially declare his candidacy, trouncing Sarkozy and leading all other potential challengers in the presidential election next April and May.

That was until the shock news of his arrest in New York over an alleged sexual assault on a hotel maid. Prosecutors charged him on Sunday with a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment. Strauss-Kahn's lawyer said he would plead not guilty.

No stranger to controversy, Strauss-Kahn was investigated by the IMF in 2008 over possible abuse of power involving a brief affair with an economist at the Fund. He was cleared of abusing power and apologized publicly for "a serious error of judgment."

News of his arrest at New York's JFK airport could hardly have come at a more critical moment.

France's Socialist Party, the main opposition party, holds a "primary" contest to pick a runner for the presidential race and candidates have to register soon. Strauss-Kahn was widely expected to declare his intentions by late June.

LACKING 'FIRE IN THE BELLY'?

He lost a similar primary selection test in 2006 to Segolene Royal in a disappointing performance that prompted the U.S. ambassador at the time to say Strauss-Kahn lacked the "fire in the belly" it takes to wage a presidential campaign.

Sarkozy won the ensuing 2007 election and is expected to seek a second term, though polls have shown him lagging behind Strauss-Kahn and struggling with a public image as a brittle, defensive personality the French find it hard to warm to.

Brought up in a secular and liberal Jewish household in Morocco and Monaco, Strauss-Kahn launched into an academic career before entering politics. Suave and multilingual, witty and self-confident, he built a reputation as a formidable public orator and a charming negotiator in private.

Like Sarkozy, he has been married three times, the first time to his high-school sweetheart at the age of 18.

To some Frenchmen of an older generation, Strauss-Kahn's third and current wife, Anne Sinclair, is arguably the bigger celebrity, despite having long ago swapped her job as the most-watched interviewer on French current affairs TV for the role of loyal spouse, and part-time blogger.

Sinclair, who married Strauss-Kahn when he was an industry minister in 1991 under the late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, is granddaughter and heiress of one of France's biggest art dealers, and was born in New York where her father fled the war-time Nazi persecution of Jews.

When he had to make a public apology over the affair at the IMF, Sinclair stuck by his side in a way that prompted comparisons to Hillary Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state and wife of former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

French voters are tolerant of their leaders' sex lives and their media tend to avoid the issue as a matter of principle. A child Mitterrand fathered outside his marriage was unknown to most people until she turned up at his funeral.

Far from French shores, Strauss-Kahn, the globe-trotting IMF boss, has carefully nurtured his left-wing credentials and built up a contact book that would put many a statesman to shame. He has also found plenty of time to visit his home country as well as a house in Marrakesh, Morocco, where his family and friends regularly reunite.

PREDICTED TRILLIONS SPENT IN CRISIS

When the global economic crisis struck at the end of 2007, Strauss-Kahn likes to let it be known he was the first to say world leaders would have to throw trillions of dollars into the pot to fight off depression.

That amounted to a small revolution for many at the IMF, hated in many countries like Argentina for ordering stringent austerity programs in return for its rescue loans.

In France, Strauss-Kahn was the architect of the economic policy that helped sweep the Socialists to power in 1997 and won him the job of finance minister. He is an economist by training and at one stage in the 1970s looked destined for a career as a major academic player in the field.

As finance minister, helped by an economic boom, he won praise for helping France qualify for the euro currency and launching a massive state-funded program to create 350,000 jobs. He claimed ownership of the shift to a 35-hour working week -- but left the fraught implementation to someone else.

His stint as head of a powerful finance, industry and budget ministry was cut short abruptly when he resigned in late 1999 over a Socialist Party funding scandal. He was later acquitted.

Years on, luck was on his side. He left French shores in November 2007 with a mandate to cut costs at an IMF whose role was widely seen as fading. Just as he got there, the great global recession gave the rescue-lending agency, and Strauss-Kahn, a new lease of life.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

[crikkett]

Even before the incident, Strauss-Kahn had been dubbed "un grand seducteur" because of his reputation as a free-wheeling ladies man.

The head of the IMF as slutty rapist. That's not even ironic. If the allegations against him are true I hope he's stopped this time.

[Nordic]

we shouldn't assume the story is true. there's a hell of a lot at stake here.

[cptmarginal]

I notice that when you type in his name on Google, one thing it suggests is "dominique strauss-kahn illuminati"



Translation, anyone?

we shouldn't assume the story is true. there's a hell of a lot at stake here.

You're right, we still need to learn more. But it is not looking good for this guy. Here's an article about him from just the day before:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... l-politics

excerpt

Is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, current head of the International Monetary Fund, a "queutard" – literally, a man who makes extensive use of his intimate parts? In any case, that's a talent for which he won an award last Tuesday at the satirical prize ceremony "Les Gerard" (the French political equivalent to the Razzy awards).

This dubious honour wasn't only based on rumours. Strauss-Kahn (widely known as DSK) had an affair with Piroska Nagy, a Hungarian economist, while working at the IMF in 2008. Both the IMF and a law firm did investigations and came to the conclusion that he never used his power to sleep with his collaborator. At the time, he was still married to Anne Sinclair, a famous French TV anchor. He eventually had to publicly apologise.

That wasn't the only scandal. There was a fuss last year when a young French author, Tristane Banon, described her encounter with him. She explained that she had interviewed him for a book about public figures and their missteps, and claimed she had to fight him off physically. She said she hadn't made a complaint at the time, because she didn't want to be "the girl who had a problem with a politician".

This side of DSK's life has almost become folklore in France. In 2009, humourist Stéphane Guillon even dedicated his comedy slot on the popular morning radio show La Matinale de France Inter (the French equivalent for Radio 4) to this particular side of the politician: "Exceptional measures have been taken at Radio France in order not to awaken the Beast. Here are the measures, as detailed by the trade unions. I quote: 'In order to guarantee the safety of the personnel, female workers are asked to wear long, unrevealing and anti-sex clothes'." This made Guillon famous, and almost got him fired. Unsurprisingly, DSK was not amused and expressed it bluntly when he entered the studio 20 minutes later.

[LilyPatToo]

If this turns out to be true, I for one will follow the trial closely and try to take some comfort from the fact that at least one rich, powerful, sleazy, sexually abusive sociopath is being stopped and removed from society for a while. I've known men like Strauss-Kahn and been abused and exploited by them and believe me vanishingly few are ever called to account for their crimes. They've accrued wealth and power and control and believe themselves to be untouchable. Actually, I'm amazed that the old monster didn't have highly-placed local law enforcement buddies in his pocket to "handle" any little indiscretion he might commit while in New York...? But, on second thought, I guess that arrogance is what generally trips these predators up.

LilyPat

[crikkett]

^^^ LilyPat

[cptmarginal]

wiki:

In 1997, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (PS) appointed Strauss-Kahn as Minister for Economics, Finance, and Industry, making him one of the most influential ministers in his Plural left government.

Although it was in theory contrary to the Socialist Party's electoral program, he implemented a wide privatization program, which included among others the IPO of France Telecom; he also implemented some deregulation policies in the research and development sector. The French economy achieved an excellent performance during his term of office: the GDP increased, whereas unemployment and public debt decreased (creation of 300,000 jobs in 1998, a level not seen since 1969).

...

In 1999, he was accused of corruption in two financial scandals related to Elf Aquitaine and the MNEF, a student mutual health insurance, and decided to resign from his ministerial office to fight these charges, in agreement with the "Balladur jurisprudence." He was replaced by Christian Sautter. He was acquitted in November 2001, and was reelected in a by-election in the Val-d'Oise.

As Minister of Economics and Finance, Strauss-Kahn succeeded in decreasing the VAT to 5.5% for renovation works in construction, thus supporting this activity. At the same time, he decreased the budget deficit, which was more than 3% of GDP under Alain Juppé's center-right government (1995–97). He thus prepared France's entrance in the euro zone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elf_Aquitaine

Elf Aquitaine was a French oil company which merged with TotalFina to form TotalFinaElf. The new company changed its name to Total in 2003. Elf has been maintained as a major brand of Total.

...

Elf Aquitaine spent millions of dollars in the 1979 Great Oil Sniffer Hoax to develop a new "gravity wave-based oil detection system", which was later revealed to be a scam, and lost over $150 million.

The Elf scandal which came to light in 1994 in France was according to The Guardian, 'the biggest fraud inquiry in Europe since the Second World War... Elf became a private bank for executives who spent £200 million on political favours, mistresses, jewellery, fine art, villas and apartments'.[1] Iraqi-born Nadhmi Auchi, at that time rumoured to be among the ten richest men of Britain, received a 15-month suspended sentence and a £1.5m fine for his involvement taking illegal commissions.[2] Auchi was also linked to the Clearstream scandal. He is BNP Paribas bank's main private share-holder; and until 2001, the money for the Oil-for-Food programme transited through the escrow account of BNP Paribas.[1] Magistrate Eva Joly investigated the case. In the Leuna/Minol deal following German reunification, elf Aquitaine took over circa 2,500 vacated gas station allottments in the former East Germany without paying the rightful owners.

Elf Aquitaine was listed on the NYSE in 1991. In 1993 Elf was awarded the exclusive contract to the Iraqi Oil Fields by then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. [citation needed]

Try these:

http://usiraq.procon.org/view.answers.p ... nID=000909
http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/1999/msg00786.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/oct/10/france.iraq

"In documents I obtained during an investigation of the French relationship with Saddam Hussein, the French interest in maintaining Saddam Hussein in power was spelled out in excruciating detail. The price tag: close to $100 billion. That was what French oil companies stood to profit in the first seven years of their exclusive oil arrangements - had Saddam remained in power.

The secret deals that French state-owned oil companies negotiated with Saddam Hussein went widely unreported in France.

Almost as soon as the guns went silent after the first Gulf war in 1991, French oil giants Total SA and Elf Aquitaine - who have now merged and expanded to become TotalFinaElf - sought a competitive advantage over their rivals in Iraq by negotiating exclusive production-sharing contracts with Saddam's regime that were intended to give them a stranglehold on Iraq's future oil production for decades to come."

[Stephen Morgan]

"slutty"?

[barracuda]

Yep - this is now a misogyny thread spin-off.