London, July 05: Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn says he plans to sue a French woman who has filed an attempted rape complaint against him.
Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said in a statement issued on Monday that he is compiling a libel complaint against the French journalist and writer Tristane Banon, AFP reported.
The statement came after Banon’s lawyer David Koubbi announced that she would lodge a complaint against Strauss-Kahn for attempted rape.
The former IMF managing director has denounced the accusation as imaginary, but Banon says the case is fully backed up.
The 32-year-old Banon, who once branded Strauss-Kahn a “rutting chimpanzee,” has claimed that Strauss-Kahn attacked her in 2003 when she went to his apartment in Paris for an interview and that she had fought her way out of his hands.
Banon’s mother, Anne Mansouret, a member of Strauss-Kahn’s center-left Socialist Party, said she had persuaded her daughter not to file a complaint at the time of the alleged incident.
In May, the former International Monetary Fund chief was formally charged with sexual assault after attacking a Guinean-born maid in a New York hotel.
He was released from house arrest after prosecutors said the hotel maid had a history of minor frauds since her arrival in the United States.
There are intense debates in France about whether Strauss-Kahn will be able to return to politics if the charges against him are dropped.
——Agencies