PRESSURE HAS BEEN building today for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to consider resigning as chief of the IMF after he was charged with trying to rape a maid at a New York hotel.
Strauss-Kahn spent the night at the infamous Rikers Island, a 400-acre penal complex, after being denied bail Monday. Prosecutors had warned the wealthy banker might flee to France and put himself beyond the reach of US law like the filmmaker Roman Polanski.
Strauss-Kahn’s weekend arrest rocked the financial world as the IMF grapples with the European debt crisis, and it upended French presidential politics. Strauss-Kahn, a member of France’s Socialist party, was widely considered the strongest potential challenger next year to President Nicolas Sarkozy.
“Hurting the institution”
Austria’s finance minister suggested today that Strauss-Kahn consider stepping down to avoid damaging the IMF, which provides emergency loans to countries in severe distress and tries to maintain global financial stability.
“Considering the situation, that bail was denied, he has to figure out for himself that he is hurting the institution,” Maria Fekter said as she arrived at a meeting of European finance ministers in Brussels.
Elena Salgado, Fekter’s Spanish counterpart, said Strauss-Kahn had to decide for himself whether he wanted to step down, considering the “extraordinarily serious” nature of the charges.
“If I had to show my solidarity and support for someone it would be toward the woman who has been assaulted, if that is really the case that she has been,” she said.
In France, defenders of Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister who had topped the polls as a possible candidate in presidential elections next year, said they suspected he was the victim of a smear campaign. Others expressed sympathy.
“I didn’t like the pictures I’ve seen on television,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said last night, referring to footage that showed Strauss-Kahn in handcuffs being escorted by police outside a New York precinct house. Showing a suspect in handcuffs is illegal in France since a 2000 law aimed at the preserving the presumption of innocence.
The 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn was arrested on Saturday at Kennedy Airport after the allegations at the Sofitel hotel near Times Square.
Court appearance
Making his first court appearance yesterday, a grim-looking Strauss-Kahn stood slumped before a judge in a dark raincoat and open-collared shirt. The silver-haired banker said nothing as a lawyer professed his innocence and strove in vain to get him released on bail.
“This battle has just begun,” defence attorney Benjamin Brafman told scores of reporters outside the courthouse, adding that Strauss-Kahn might appeal the bail denial.
Because of his high profile, Strauss-Kahn will be held in protective custody on Rikers Island, away from most detainees, said city Correction Department spokesman Stephen Morello. Unlike most prisoners who share 50-bed barracks, he will have a single-bed cell and will eat all of his meals alone there. He’ll have a prison guard escort when he is outside his cell.
Rikers, on an island in the East River between the Bronx and Queens, is one of the nation’s largest jail complexes, with a daily inmate population of about 14,000.
The complex’s notable history includes accounts of run-ins between inmates and guards. In one such case last year, a guard was sentenced to six years in prison for ordering inmate beatings as part of a rogue disciplinary system. Prosecutors said he imposed order in a unit at the complex by having teenage inmates beat other teenagers who had stepped out of line. The union that represents jail guards said the prisoners fabricated the allegations.
Also last year, more than a dozen correction officers were injured while quelling fights between inmates awaiting pretrial hearings at a jail there. And in February, the city settled a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of an inmate who died after a scuffle with guards.
Strauss-Kahn was ordered jailed at least until a court proceeding Friday. He cannot claim diplomatic immunity because he was in New York on personal business and was paying his own way, the IMF said. He could seek that protection only if he were conducting official business, spokesman William Murray said.
The agency’s executive board met informally Monday for a report on the charges against Strauss-Kahn, the managing director at the international lending agency since 2007.
- AP
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