Strauss-Kahn released by police

Ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been freed by police investigating a suspected prostitution ring (AP)

Published: 8:45pm, 20th February 2012
Updated: 5:24am, 23rd February 2012

The former chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been released from a French police station after two days of questioning over a suspected hotel prostitution ring.

Judicial officials say he will be summoned again next month by three judges who will decide if there is enough evidence to file charges in a case based on the alleged prostitution ring in France and Belgium.

French TV footage showed police holding reporters behind metal barriers as a tinted-window car carrying Mr Strauss-Kahn left the police station in the northern city of Lille.

Mr Strauss-Kahn was a one-time French presidential hopeful whose political chances were derailed by a sexual assault accusation in New York City and his subsequent resignation from the IMF in May.

French police have questioned prostitutes who said they had sex with Mr Strauss-Kahn during 2010 and 2011 at a luxury hotel in Paris, a restaurant in the French capital and also in Washington DC, where he lived while working for the Washington-based IMF.

Mr Strauss-Kahn's name surfaced in the probe last autumn, and he has welcomed the chance to tell his side of the story.

Police asked him about suspicions centreing on complicity in organised prostitution at hotels in Lille and Paris, officials said. One of his lawyers has acknowledged Mr Strauss-Kahn took part in orgies, but did not know the women attending were prostitutes.

Two men with ties to Mr Strauss-Kahn have been put under preliminary investigation on charges including organising a prostitution ring and misuse of corporate funds.

"He is entirely satisfied to have been heard," his lawyer Frederique Beaulieu told reporters. She said Mr Strauss-Kahn's questioning took place "with great serenity" and he answered all questions asked.

"The fact that he is released free is a very good thing," she said.