Paris: Disgraced ex-IMF head Dominique
Strauss-Kahn suspected that a smartphone that disappeared just
before his arrest on sexual assault charges in New York had
been hacked, associates said on Saturday.
Several sources close to Strauss-Kahn told agency he had
called his wife Anne Sinclair as he was on his way to the
airport to return to France to tell her "something serious"
had happened.
Strauss-Kahn, who was taken off the plane on May 14
following a complaint by a hotel maid that he had attacked
her, was referring to the loss of his official International
Monetary Fund BlackBerry phone and his suspicions that it
might have been hacked, the sources said.
An article to be published in the New York Review of
Books quotes unnamed sources close to Strauss-Kahn saying he
had been warned in a text message on the day of his arrest
that an email he sent to his wife from the BlackBerry had been
read in the offices of French President Nicolas Sarkozy`s UMP
party in Paris.
The article raises questions that Strauss-Kahn, seen as
the biggest threat to Sarkozy in next year`s French
presidential elections, may have been set up in order to
discredit him.
Assault charges were dropped against him after
prosecutors said that the maid, Nafissatou Diallo, had lied
about details of her allegations, although evidence showed
that some sort of hurried sexual encounter did occur.
As a result of the scandal Strauss-Kahn had to resign as
head of the International Monetary Fund, his high-flying
political career was left in tatters and since returning home
he has faced new allegations of sexual misconduct in France.
UMP secretary general Jean-Francois Cope dismissed today
the idea of a plot against Strauss-Kahn as "absolutely
ridiculous," alleging it had been cooked up to dent Sarkozy`s
chances of winning the election.
"I would like to see the evidence if it exists," he said
on France`s TF1 television.
PTI
