A Belgian brothel owner called “Dodo la Saumure”, orgies at luxury hotels and accusations of pimping against a former French presidential hopeful — it sounds like the plot to a sensationalist police drama.
This week Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and 12 others face charges of “aggravated pimping as part of a group” for allegedly participating in high-level orgies with prostitutes. The so-called Carlton Affair, which centres on allegations that businessmen and police officials in the northern French town of Lille supplied women for sex parties in Lille, Paris and Washington, has gripped and titillated the French establishment since details first emerged four years ago.
With the international economist and former French finance minister facing the possibility of a custodial sentence, the tale of hubris, power and sex, set to unfold in a Lille courtroom over the next few weeks, is expected to grip a nation famously blasé about the private lives of public figures.