- Reuters/Reuters - Former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn gestures as he leaves his apartment in Paris December 10, 2012.
DOUAI, France (Reuters) - A French court on Wednesday rejected a request by former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn to drop a sex offence inquiry in which he risks standing trial on pimping charges, his lawyers said.
The verdict came just over a week after Strauss-Kahn
settled a separate civil case in New York with a hotel maid who accused
him of attempted rape in May 2011, ending his presidential ambitions
and career at the International Monetary Fund.
While the New York
settlement brought his U.S. legal woes to an end, Wednesday's decision
by the court in Douai, in northern France, removed the prospect of a quick conclusion to the last sex offence inquiry he faces.
"Dominque
Strauss-Kahn's defense team is certain that he will ultimately be
cleared of these absurd accusations of pimping," lawyer Henri Leclerc said in a statement, adding that he planned to take the matter to France's supreme court.
Strauss-Kahn, once
tipped to become president or France, is under fire over sex parties
with prostitutes in the so-called Carlton Affair, named after a hotel in
northern France at the center of the inquiry.
His lawyers argue
that consorting with prostitutes is not illegal and that investigators
have no grounds for pursuing him on the grounds that his behavior could
be construed as pimping, which is illegal.
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