Michel Taubmann, journalist and biographer of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, poses with his book “DSK Affairs: The Second Inquiry.” (Reuters)
PARIS — Dominique Strauss-Kahn admitted his penchant for swingers’ parties in a new book out Thursday, as he gave his own version of the New York hotel encounter which cost him his job at the IMF and his shot at the French presidency.
Biographer Michel Taubmann’s “DSK’s Affairs — The Counter-Inquiry” paints a picture of a powerful politician and businessman, who sees no shame in his libertine lifestyle but who firmly denies all the allegations of sexual deviance laid against him.
Strauss-Kahn suggested that uninhibited sex lives were not unusual among the French elite — and that in itself was not a crime. “Apart from my liberal sexual life, which I am not alone in having in the world of politics and business and which is nothing illegal, there is nothing to reproach me for,” he said.
Strauss-Kahn admitted to attending swingers’ parties but denied knowing that any of the participants were prostitutes.
“I participated in swingers’ nights, that’s true. But usually the participants in these nights are not prostitutes,” he told the author.
Importantly the book also contains a detailed account, based for the first time on interviews with Strauss-Kahn, of the “consensual but stupid” sex act between the former French politician and chambermaid Nafissatou Diallo at the Manhattan Sofitel last May.
Diallo is said to have given the 62 year old “a suggestive look,” which he took as “a proposal,” and the two then proceeded to have sex. Strauss-Kahn could never refuse “the chance for a moment of pleasure” and could not resist “the temptation of oral sex,” Taubmann adds.
“Nothing would have happened if I had not had this consensual, but stupid relationship with Nafissatou Diallo,” Strauss-Kahn is quoted in the book as having said. “That day, I opened the door to all the other affairs,” he added.
The book also alludes to the idea that Strauss-Kahn was the victim of a plot mounted by his political enemies. His BlackBerry smartphone — which he also suspected was hacked — went missing from the hotel room after his encounter with Diallo.
Lawyers for the 32-year-old hotel worker, who accused the former IMF boss of trying to rape her, dismissed the account as “complete fantasy.”
“Strauss-Kahn’s absurd claim that Ms. Diallo was told to steal his Blackberry and somehow looked at him seductively and consented to his violent and abusive sexual acts is complete fantasy,” Kenneth Thompson and Douglas Wigdor said in a statement.
“We look forward to questioning him at trial about the sick and deranged acts he committed against Ms. Diallo,” they said, referring to a US civil case filed against Strauss-Kahn following the collapse of the criminal case against him.
Strauss-Kahn also weathered an investigation once he was back home in Paris for an alleged attempted rape against writer Tristane Banon in 2003. The claim was found to have substance, but fell foul of the statute of limitations for such an offense.
But he has yet to shrug off stories linking him to an alleged hotel prostitution ring in the northern French city of Lille.