Ex-IMF chief begs media to leave him alone

PanARMENIAN.Net - Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a rare magazine interview published on Wednesday, Oct 10, that he is tired of being hunted by the media and begged to be left alone as he tries to move on from a sex scandal that wrecked his career, Reuters reported.

Strauss-Kahn, who is trying to make a comeback as a conference speaker while fighting two legal cases over alleged sexual misconduct, said since he had not been convicted of any crime he should be left alone.

"I no longer have public duties, I am not a candidate for anything. I have never been convicted in this country or any other," Strauss-Kahn, once tipped to win the May presidential election, told the weekly Le Point.

"Nothing justifies the fact I have become the target of a media hunt which sometimes ends up resembling a manhunt."

Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister, was days away from announcing a bid for the 2012 presidential election when he was pulled off a plane on a New York runway by police and briefly jailed after a hotel maid accused him of trying to rape her.

Strauss-Kahn, 63, told Le Point he was not a celebrity or politician and so was entitled to privacy like anybody else.

Instead, photographers frequently stand guard outside the apartment he recently moved to in Montparnasse, he said.

"I cannot stand people abusing my situation and the judicial inquiries that are, wrongly, targeting me to ridicule my private life and throw about scraps, real or invented, on the pretext of goodness knows what moralizing transparency."