IMF chief charged with sex assault, rape attempt

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NEW YORK: IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged Sunday with attempting to rape a New York chambermaid, unleashing a scandal which could bury his long-held ambitions to be elected the president of France.

The bombshell news of the veteran French politician's arrest left the International Monetary Fund reeling, coming ahead of critical talks on repairing the painful fallout of the debt crisis sweeping the euro zone.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, was expected to be arraigned later Sunday by a New York judge, after being yanked off an Air France flight on Saturday minutes before take-off and grilled through the night in a Harlem police cell.

It was a humiliating turn of events for the jet-setting former French finance minister, who had been expected to throw his hat into the ring for the 2012 French election, challenging President Nicolas Sarkozy.

As the world's press gathered outside the tough New York precinct where he spent the night, stunned lawyers hurriedly sought access to their client.

"He's going to plead not guilty. He denies all the charges," one lawyer Benjamin Brafman told reporters as he left the police station.

Strauss-Kahn, a familiar figure on French political scene and a leading member of the Socialist Party, was charged with a "criminal sexual act, unlawful imprisonment, attempted rape" of a 32-year-old woman, a police spokesman said.

Later Sunday, the woman, a chambermaid employed for the past three years at the luxury Sofitel hotel near Times Square, picked Strauss-Kahn out in a police line-up.

The woman alleged he had assaulted her. (AFP)