AAPJuly 5, 2011, 5:18 pm
Dominique Strauss-Kahn is facing a potential new sexual assault investigation, after a French writer announced plans to formally accuse him of trying to rape her during a 2002 book interview.
Tristane Banon, 32, indicated she would send "a complaint for attempted rape" against Strauss-Kahn to prosecutors, likely on Tuesday, her lawyer David Koubbi told the news magazine L'Express on its website.
Strauss-Kahn, who resigned from his IMF post after being charged with sexual assault in New York, dismissed Banon's claims as "imaginary", his lawyers said in a statement.
Strauss-Kahn's lawyers hit back by threatening Banon, who once branded the former IMF chief a "rutting chimpanzee", with a defamation suit.
The prospect of a fresh criminal complaint against Strauss-Kahn came as the case in New York, where he was recently released from house arrest on charges of trying to rape a hotel maid, looked set to collapse after prosecutors revealed they had doubts about the credibility of his accuser.
Strauss-Kahn's lawyers said Banon's complaint "comes at a time when the untruthful nature of the accusations he faces in the United States are no longer in any doubt."
Koubbi told AFPTV that Banon decided to file the complaint against Strauss-Kahn "because she endured what she accuses Dominique Strauss-Kahn of and in France as elsewhere when you are a victim of an attempted rape, you must file a complaint."
The French writer and journalist herself told the L'Express website that "seeing Strauss-Kahn freed (from house arrest) then afterward dining in a fancy restaurant with friends, that makes me sick."
"I only want one thing, that he comes back to France, with his presumption of innocence, so that we can go before a court."
Banon said on a 2007 television show that she had been attacked five years earlier by a politician she had interviewed for a book in his apartment.
She later identified the man as Strauss-Kahn.
"It finished very violently," she said on the television show. "I kicked him. He opened my bra. He tried to undo my jeans."
Lawyer David Koubbi said Banon had been dissuaded from filing charges by her mother, a regional councillor in Strauss-Kahn's Socialist party.
Her mother, Anne Mansouret, admitted in a French television interview in May that she had urged her daughter not to file a complaint after the incident.
Banon came forward again after Strauss-Kahn's May 14 arrest in New York, but Koubbi said his client had no intention of pressing charges while the American prosecution was going on because the two cases should be kept separate.
Strauss-Kahn's lawyers said that Strauss-Kahn "has always said that the incident described by Ms Banon since 2007 is imaginary".
"He notes that this complaint comes quite conveniently right at the moment when there is no longer the slightest doubt about the false nature of the accusations against him in the United States," the lawyers said in a joint statement.
Before his arrest in New York, Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist heavyweight, polled as the person most likely to beat French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 election.
Koubbi denied the decision to proceed with a complaint now was driven by political motives or influenced by the unravelling of the New York case.
"Even if (the New York) case against Mr Strauss-Kahn turns out to be unfounded, ours is not. It is extremely solid and backed up," L'Express quoted him as saying.
If Banon files her complaint, a prosecutor can conduct a preliminary investigation to determine if there is enough evidence to support charges against Strauss-Kahn.
Preliminary charges are followed by a lengthier investigation, sometimes lasting years, to determine if the case should go to trial before a judge.
The same process would apply to the slander complaint against Banon.
Strauss-Kahn has relinquished his passport to authorities in New York. Another court hearing would be needed for him to get it back.
His next appearance is scheduled for July 18 - five days after the deadline for candidates to register in the Socialist Party primary.
Kenneth Thompson, who is representing the hotel maid accuser in New York, applauded Banon's decision to file a sexual assault complaint against Strauss-Kahn.
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