Combo of former International Monetary Fund Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn (L) and Nafissatou Diallo(R)
In August, prosecutors dropped the sexual assault charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, after a three-month criminal investigation. The 62-year-old was accused of sexually assaulting hotel maid Nofissatou Diallo, an immigrant worker. In a case that was filled with dramatic twists and turns, Strauss-Kahn was taken into custody on May 14 after being taken off an Air France jet at Kennedy International Airport. When the charges were dropped, Strauss-Kahn issued his first statement since the embarrassing arrest saying that it was “a nightmare for me and my family.” Reuters

The rape charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn will be officially dropped on Tuesday at a Manhattan court hearing scheduled for 11:30 a.m.

Prosecutors asked the judge on Monday to dismiss the charges because of doubts about the credibility of the hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo, who accused Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault.

Diallo said that Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, forced her to perform oral sex when she came to clean his room at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan in May. The ensuing scandal forced Strauss-Kahn to resign from the I.M.F. and dashed his hopes of becoming the next president of France.

Forensic evidence showed that a sexual encounter took place in the hotel room, but prosecutors could not determine whether the encounter was consensual. Because the evidence was inconclusive and Diallo's credibility undermined, prosecutors decided not to pursue the case.

Diallo allegedly lied on her application for asylum, and that and other reported lies make it impossible to resolve the question of what exactly happened, prosecutors wrote, according to the Associated Press.

But while the criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn will almost certainly be dropped, he still faces a civil suit from Diallo. He may also face charges in a separate case in France, in which a writer, Tristane Banon, has accused him of sexually assaulting her when she interviewed him in 2003.

The collapse of the criminal case against Strauss-Kahn is a huge blow for the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, who has lost several high-profile cases recently. For example, in May, a court acquitted two police officers of charges that they had sexually assaulted a drunken woman after escorting her to her apartment. A conviction in the Strauss-Kahn case would have gone a long way toward restoring the district attorney's image.

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