IMF chief vows to fight sex assault charges

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IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn vowed on Sunday to fight charges of assaulting a hotel chambermaid, amid an explosive sex scandal likely to bury his dreams of becoming the next French president.

The veteran French politician, ignominiously led away from a New York police station in handcuffs, will defend himself against allegations of sexually assaulting the maid in a luxury hotel, lawyer Benjamin Brafman told reporters.

"He intends to vigorously defend these charges and denies any wrongdoing," Brafman said outside the courthouse where the IMF chief will appear on Monday.

The bombshell news of the arrest of one of the world's most powerful men has left the International Monetary Fund reeling, ahead of critical talks on the fallout of the debt crisis sweeping the euro zone.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, has hired a barrage of top lawyers, as questions swirled over whether he could escape prosecution. But on late Sunday, a New York police spokesman said the IMF chief did not have the right to diplomatic immunity.

Another lawyer William Taylor told journalists outside a Manhattan courthouse that the arraignment was postponed until Monday so Strauss-Kahn could undergo further testing by police.

"Our client willingly consented to a scientific and forensic examination," Taylor said, adding the IMF chief was "tired but he's fine."

A former French finance minister, Strauss-Kahn had been expected to throw his hat into the ring for the 2012 French election, challenging President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But his political ambitions look to be in tatters, after he was yanked off an Air France flight on Saturday just minutes before take-off.

He has been charged with a "criminal sexual act, unlawful imprisonment, and attempted rape" of a 32-year-old woman, a police spokesman said.

The woman, employed for the past three years at the luxury Sofitel hotel near Times Square, picked Strauss-Kahn out of a line-up on Sunday, as police said they had won a warrant to seek DNA evidence on his clothes.

The woman alleged he had assaulted her in his suite when he got out of his shower naked.

"She was in the room. She thought it was empty. That's when he approached her from behind and touched her inappropriately. He forced her to perform a sexual act on him," a police spokesman told the media.

He described the victim as "female, black, 32 years old," but could not confirm details given in the New York Times that the IMF chief pulled her into the bedroom and onto the bed and then locked the door.

She managed to fight him off, but he dragged her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaulted her a second time, the daily said.

MSNBC television said that in the bathroom, Strauss-Kahn forced the maid to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear.

Strauss-Kahn's wife, high-profile French television journalist Anne Sinclair, said however she did not believe the allegations against her husband, telling the media: "I have no doubt his innocence will be established."

Strauss-Kahn, who has been widely praised for his stewardship of the IMF, is so well known in France he is often referred to simply by his initials DSK.

Even though he has not yet officially declared his candidacy in next year's French president elections, he had been topping the opinion polls.

News of his arrest threw the Socialist party into disarray, and could prove a boost for Sarkozy and his rightwing UMP which is also facing a challenge from the far-right National Front and its leader Marine Le Pen.

Conspiracy theories immediately began circulating in France speculating that the events were just an elaborate set-up to discredit Strauss-Kahn.

The arrest comes as the 187-member IMF is seeking to aid debt-ridden countries in the euro zone, and the executive board was now due to meet to discuss the crisis on Monday.

Strauss-Kahn's arrest had an immediate affect on the markets, with the euro falling half a cent in opening Asian trade on Monday as markets fretted that the talks on Greece's debt crisis would be thrown into disarray.

Strauss-Kahn, whose stint at the IMF does not officially end until September 2012, had been due to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Sunday to discuss an aid package for debt-laden Greece.

He was then to attend a meeting of EU finance ministers on Monday and Tuesday in Brussels. The IMF said his number two John Lipsky would stand in as acting IMF chief for now.