Strauss-Kahn tries to ban book
2013-02-25 16:27
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Paris - Disgraced IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is taking legal steps to stop a controversial new book by Argentinian-born Marcela Iacub detailing their liaison, his lawyers said on Monday.
In Beauty and the Beast, due to be released on Wednesday, Iacub says she had a relationship with Strauss-Kahn from January to August 2012, in the midst of the scandal over accusations he sexually assaulted a New York hotel maid the previous year.
She doesn't name Strauss-Kahn in the book, but she told Le Nouvel Observateur magazine that it was about him, while admitting that she had mixed fiction with reality.
Strauss-Kahn's lawyers said they will on Tuesday seek the seizure of the books after suing Iacub and her publisher Stock for an attack on his private life.
If that is not allowed, they will seek for every copy of the book to carry an insert, lawyers Richard Malka and Jean Veil said, without giving details on what they want it to say.
Strauss-Kahn, who has called the book an "abomination", is seeking €100 000 in damages and compensation from Iacub and Stock, and a similar amount from Le Nouvel Observateur.
Sex ring probe
Lawyers for Stock and Le Nouvel Observateur declined to comment on the suit, which will go before a Paris judge on Tuesday.
The book touches on the incident in New York and the cases in France against Strauss-Kahn, as well as his relationship with Anne Sinclair, his fabulously rich wife of 20 years who announced last July that she had split from her husband.
Iacub's new work is the latest in a long line of books, plays, TV shows and movies on the spectacular fall from grace of a man who was once tipped to become France's next president.
The Socialist politician in December agreed a financial settlement with the hotel maid whose 2011 allegation of sexual assault forced him to resign from the International Monetary Fund.
But the silver-haired 63-year-old is still being investigated in France as part of a probe into allegations he procured prostitutes for sex parties in Europe and in Washington.
- SAPA
