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DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN has returned to France for the first time since being charged with the attempted rape of a New York hotel maid, in a a scandal that wrecked the former IMF chief’s chances for the French presidency.
New York prosecutors later dropped their case against Strauss-Kahn because of questions about the maid’s credibility, but the affair cost him his job at the IMF and exposed his personal life to worldwide scrutiny that has stained his image and plunged his political future into uncertainty.
Smiling and waving silently, he stepped off an Air France flight this morning at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport – a different man from the one who, just four months ago, had been the pollsters’ favorite to beat President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s presidential elections.
Few expect Strauss-Kahn to return to French politics soon, but his supporters have been eagerly awaiting his return after three months of legal drama in the US that they saw as unfairly hostile to him.
“I’m moved, I always believed in his innocence. I wanted very much for this to be over,” Michelle Sabban, a fellow Socialist Party member, said on i-Tele television.
His wife, respected former TV personality Anne Sinclair, was at Strauss-Kahn’s side as he arrived, beaming widely. Riot police protected him and the area. The crush of reporters outside their home was so thick that Strauss-Kahn had trouble reaching and opening his front door.
The last time he tried to take an Air France flight from JFK airport, Strauss-Kahn was pulled out of first class minutes before takeoff by police. They were investigating the maid’s claim that hours earlier, Strauss-Kahn had forced her to perform oral sex and tried to rape her.
He quit his job, spent almost a week in jail, then six weeks of house arrest and nearly two more months barred from leaving the country before Manhattan prosecutors dropped the case last month, saying they no longer trusted the maid, Guinean immigrant Nafissatou Diallo.
Diallo is continuing to press her claims in a lawsuit. Strauss-Kahn denies the allegations.
A Strauss-Kahn faces another investigation in France over attempted rape, based on accusations by French novelist Tristane Banon. He calls the claim “imaginary.”
Banon’s mother, Anne Mansouret, believes that Strauss-Kahn’s return “is a good thing for my daughter’s complaint because he will have to answer to police.”
Banon says she didn’t file a complaint after the 2003 incident because her mother, a regional Socialist official, urged her not to.
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Great news guys. Now get onto Hireland and pledge and give a few jobs.
@torpedo, their focus should not be on giving a few jobs, they should focus on continuation of their successful growth strategy, if they succeed jobs will follow.
They made a pre tax profit of 700 million. I think the can afford to hire one or two people.
It is that sort of attitude that leads to inefficiency and eventual ruin, you do not hire people just to sit on their arses.
‘Very challenging environment’ indeed. It’s a tough business building apartheid cement walls around Palestine, but some Irish firm has got to do it.
They are obviously working in a very challenging environment and there is still some way to go before new jobs will emerge. A profit of less than 4% on sales suggest that further cost cutting will be needed to remain competitive.
A challenging environment all right. Putting up Israel’s apartheid wall.
But its good for tricky Dicky Bruton’s portfolio.
Much of these profits have been made on the back of an illegal price-fixing cartel operating in the.concrete and cement industries. Ongoing legal actions taken by Framus Ltd and Goode Concrete serve to demonstrate the extent of the crippling stranglehold CRH have over many small businesses in this country. Compounding this is the negligence of the Competition Authority who steadfastly refuse to investigate the industry despite the severity of the allegations laid at the door of CRH. The term Regulatory Capture comes to mind here.
CRH operate a cartel with others in the cement, concrete and tarmac markets in Ireland. They have been selling concrete below average variable cost in the Dublin concrete market and abused their dominant position in their upstream cement and aggregates markets by doing so. This is illegal and criminal but they are being protected by the successive Governments due to a term called political and regulatory capture.
CRH has been found to have operated a price fixing cartel in Northern Ireland between 1985 and 1992. CRH was fined by the European Commission in 1994 for conducting a pan European cartel. In 2007 CRH was fined €530,000 for obstructing an antitrust investigation and destroying evidence. In 2009 CRH was fined €25 million for participation in a price fixing cartel in Poland.
CRH is doing monumental damage to the Irish economy by overcharging for cement and tarmac and using this money to subsidise a corporate eviction strategy which is costing the economy jobs.
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