Disgraced ex-IMF chief wants charges dismissed

Lawyers for Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Wednesday asked a French appeal court to dismiss charges that the disgraced former IMF chief helped procure prostitutes for sex parties.

Strauss-Kahn admits attending orgies in France and the United States but claims he did not know the women involved were being paid to take part.

He was not present at today’s closed-door hearing and his lawyers did not speak to reporters before entering the court in the northern town of Douai. The case, known as the “Carlton affair” in France, centres around allegations that business leaders and police officials in Lille operated a vice ring supplying girls for sex parties, some of which are said to have taken place at the Carlton Hotel in Douaiy.

Lawyers for Jean-Christophe Lagarde, a police commissioner who faces the same charges as Strauss-Kahn, have also asked for the case against their client to be dismissed. Rene Kojfer, the former public relations officer at the hotel, accused of pimping in the affair, said on Wednesday that if Kahn’s name was not involved there “would be no case.” He said: “I never took money. I am not a pimp,” Kojfer told Le Parisien newspaper. “What has happened to me and my superiors in the Carlton is unjust. What a great hullabaloo and so little to show for it in the end...In my opinion, if there was no DSK, there would be no case.”