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[Dave Chance]

http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20120221001349

LILLE (AFP) -- French police detained former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn for questioning Tuesday over allegations he took part in orgies in Paris and Washington paid for by a pair of businessmen.

Investigating magistrates want to know whether he was aware that the women who entertained him at parties in restaurants, hotels and swingers' clubs in Paris, Washington and several European capitals were paid prostitutes.

They will also seek to determine whether Strauss-Kahn knew that the escorts were paid for by funds fraudulently obtained by his hosts from a French public works company for which one of them worked as a senior executive.

Paying a prostitute is not in itself illegal in France, but profiting from vice or embezzling company funds to pay for sex can lead to charges.

Two northern businessmen, Fabrice Paszkowski, a medical equipment tycoon with ties to Strauss-Kahn's Socialist Party, and David Roquet, former director of a local subsidiary of building giant BTP Eiffage, have been charged.

Strauss-Kahn is said to have met Paszkowski through a Socialist Party contact who was involved in organising his return to French politics to contest this year's presidential election, which he was favourite to win.

The pair has alleged links to a network of French and Belgian prostitutes centred on the Carlton Hotel in Lille, a well-known meeting place of the local business and political elite