Chercher les femmes: IMF head faces the music

Although the picture provoked predictable cries of "champagne socialist", DSK - as he is known in his homeland - looked every inch a man in command of his own destiny.

With the polls showing him clear favourite to beat Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's election (despite the fact he had not even thrown his hat into the ring) and speculation about the five-figure cost of his suits dampened by threats of legal action - the road to the lyse Palace seemed obstacle-free.

A mugshot taken last week, after his arrest for allegedly attempting to rape a chamber maid in a top Manhattan Hotel, told a very different story. Exhausted, eyes downcast and wearing a rumpled, open-neck shirt, Strauss-Kahn was a shadow of his former self. Humiliating images of him being led handcuffed to his arraignment - the "perp" walk all US prisoners face - reinforced the sense that the 62-year-old was a broken man.

Since his arrest, his long-standing reputation as "the great seducer" has mutated into something more sinister; a succession of women have come forward accusing him of sexual harassment and worse, while rumours of visits to prostitutes and a swingers' club have gained currency.

Voluntarily divested of his IMF role, and released from Rikers Island on $5.6 million (3.5m) bail only on condition he surrender his travel documents and submit to 24-hour surveillance, he is effectively ruined whether or not there is any truth in the allegations against him.

What happened in room 2806 on the 28th floor of the French-owned Sofitel Hotel looks set to be the subject of the most high-profile sex case the US has seen since Michael Jackson was accused of child molesting. According to the alleged victim, a 32-year-old Guinean immigrant, the lawyer, economist and academic emerged naked from the shower after she had entered his suite to clean it. It is alleged he chased her down a corridor and into another room, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and tore at her stockings before she escaped and informed her employers.

He, it is said, checked out in such a hurry he left his mobile phone. Police officers later boarded an Air France plane sitting on the runway at JFK airport and arrested him.

According to his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, he denies all charges. He is expected to claim the sexual contact was consensual. His third wife, Anne Sinclair, the presenter of a TV politics show, and his daughter Camille, travelled to New York to lend their support during his court hearing.

The chamber maid's lawyer Jeffrey Shapiro, insists his client, who lives with her 15-year-old daughter, has suffered "unbelievable trauma" as a result of the alleged assault. Officers from the NYPD are said to have checked the woman's keycard to ascertain if she used it to enter the room (and how long she was there) and to have DNA-tested a section of carpet she is supposed to have spat on.

In France, suspicions of a political stitch-up have been fuelled by a recent off-the-record interview Strauss-Kahn gave the leftwing daily Libration, in which he said he feared a woman would be paid "between 500,000 and 1,000,000" to claim he had raped her.

Elsewhere, however, it is the claims about DSK's voracious sexual appetite - and the degree to which his indiscretions have been hushed up by French journalists - that have captured public attention. Indeed, though the DSK story has significant implications for the global economy, what makes it so compelling is the insight it gives into powerful men, the gap between Anglo-Saxon and French sexual mores, and the dangerously incestuous nature of the French establishment.

In gaining a reputation as "un chaud lapin" (a hot rabbit), Strauss-Kahn was merely conforming to established French tradition. Indeed, as far back as 1899, president Felix Faure died of a stroke while having sex with serial mistress Marguerite Steinheil.

More recently, Franois Mitterrand engaged in a string of affairs during his presidency and fathered a daughter, Mazarine, with lover Anne Pingeot. None of this affected his political standing and both his families stood side by side at his funeral.

Jacques Chirac's philandering was also legendary. In 2001, his chauffeur wrote a book in which he described Chirac's manifold casual encounters, dubbing him "trois minutes; douche compris" (three minutes, shower included). Yet even Chirac's antics pale in comparison with the sexual activities of DSK. Married three times, to Helene Dumas, Brigitte Guillemette and Sinclair, he too has had affairs and fleeting encounters with a succession of prominent women, including, it is claimed, French playwright Yasmin Reza and Spanish writer Carmen Llera.

It is claimed Strauss-Kahn supplemented these encounters with visits to Les Chandelles, an elite Parisian swingers' club in which scantily-clad women are seduced by well-to-do men. And last week, one of America's most famous madams, Kristin Davis, said DSK used her escort agency, Wicked Models, twice, introduced by Bosnian prostitute Irma Nici.

In this, DSK is perhaps indistinguishable from many successful men, for whom power seems to act as an aphrodisiac. In his book, Sensation Seeking And Risky Behaviour, psychologist Marvin Zuckerman claimed the very traits that help high-fliers succeed in their careers lead them to take unnecessary risks.

"Their experiences have to be either very new or very intense, or both, or else they get very restless," he says. The sense of sexual invincibility experienced by successful men may well be consolidated by experience. It is not difficult to see how years of successfully wooing women could lead them to see themselves as irresistible.

Where DSK differs from men such as Mitterrand and Chirac, however, is that some of the encounters described appear to have been less than consensual.

According to his official biographer, Michel Taubmann, he was more harassed than harassing. "I've seen time and again women MPs, party workers, brazenly passing on notes, hoping he would notice them," he has said.

Yet journalist Tristane Banon claims Strauss-Kahn attempted to rape her in 2002. She alleges that, after telling her she could interview him only if she agreed to hold his hand, he assaulted her, attempting to tear off her clothes. Banon's assertion that the former IMF chief was all over her "like a rutting chimpanzee" is echoed by an anonymous French actress who insists he behaved in a similar way after inviting her back to his flat.

French socialist politician Auriele Filippetti alleges he made a "very heavy, very insistent" attempt to seduce her and that she resolved never to be alone with him again, while Hungarian economist, Piroska Nagy, complained she felt coerced into having a fling with him and described him as a "man with a problem that may make him ill-equipped to lead an institution where women work under his command".

What is astonishing about this deluge of accusations is that none of them are new; Banon first mentioned the alleged attempted rape on a chat-show in 2007 (although his name was beeped out). Nagy's claims were the subject of an internal investigation at the IMF, which described his behaviour as "inappropriate", but cleared him of harassment, favouritism and abuse of power.

There were books too. One, Sexus Politicus, contained a chapter on his "unconventional" behaviour, while another, written by a former aide under the pseudonym Cassandre alleged he had raped a maid in Mexico. Yet, thanks to France's self-consciously relaxed attitude towards the sexual foibles of its politicians and what Sexus Politicus author Christophe Deloire has called an "omerta" on their private lives, his dazzling career has been unaffected.

"In a Catholic culture with a deeply entrenched suspicion towards money, French journalists will pull out all the stops to investigate financial malfeasance. But when the issue is sexual indiscretion, no matter how shocking, French journalists rigorously observe a strict silence, especially regarding the private vices of politicians," writes Matthew Fraser, associate professor of global communications at the American University of Paris.

Fraser believes French people see their indifference towards sexual indiscretions as evidence of their cultural superiority, portraying the Anglo-Saxon obsession with sex as childish.

Added to this reticence is the symbiosis between politicians and journalists in Paris. Not only do they feed off each other professionally, but many are paired romantically. DSK's relationship with Anne Sinclair is not unusual. Nicolas Sarkozy had an affair with Le Figaro political correspondent Anne Fulda. Later, he was linked to TF1 network news presenter Laurence Ferrari. And the socialist Franois Hollande, tipped to run for the presidency in DSK's place, left Sgolne Royal for Valrie Trierweiler, the Paris Match political journalist who covered him in the 2007 election.

So wide is the cultural gap between France and the US that, while Gallic commentators have been outraged by photographs of DSK handcuffed and unshaven, French newspapers have identified the alleged victim and her daughter, even debating her attractiveness.

It is said Sarkozy, grasping the cultural nuances, warned DSK to modify his behaviour before he took up his post as IMF chief in Washington DC. "Your life will be passed under a magnifying glass," Sarkozy added, prophetically.

As DSK, who was last week placed on suicide watch, finally left Rikers Island, complete with electronic tag, he must have been wishing he had heeded that advice.

He is not without his supporters. Guillemette - Banon's godmother - said her former husband was gentle. "Violence isn't part of his temperament," she said. And his long-standing friend, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lvy, claimed it was "absurd" to think that the charmer he had known for 20 years was "this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast".

Many French people agree. An opinion poll taken the day after his arrest showed 57 per cent thought he was the victim of a plot. Other people will take more convincing. As prosecutors announced he had been indicted, district attorney John "Artie" McConnell told the judge: "The proof against him is substantial. It is continuing to grow every day."

In economic terms, the fall-out is less significant than might have been expected. His resignation as head of the IMF was anticipated (as everyone knew he would run for president), although the nature of his departure has heightened France finance minister Christine Lagarde's chances of succeeding him (she would be the first female appointment). But in personal terms, it is catastrophic.

If found guilty, DSK faces 15 years' jail. But even if he isn't, his gilded life is over; his presidential hopes dashed. As a result of one disputed encounter in the Sofitel Hotel, he will be remembered neither as a brilliant economist nor a "great seducer", but as a man whose inability to rein himself in was the source of an ignominious downfall.

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