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LILLE (France) — Lurid details of lunchtime group parties emerged yesterday as an former sex worker nicknamed “Jade” took the stand in a French trial over a high-end vice ring that landed former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in court on charges of pimping.
The first part of the multi-faceted trial with 14 accused is focused on a vice ring allegedly run by the owners and a publicist for the luxury Carlton hotel in the northern city of Lille.
It was during a probe into the so-called “Carlton Affair” that investigators stumbled across the name of Strauss-Kahn, whose high-flying career and presidential prospects imploded when a New York hotel maid accused him of physical assault in 2011.
Strauss-Kahn will not appear until he testifies next week, and witnesses are not allowed to refer to those not present, but the now-retired sex worker Jade made references to “a public figure” she met through the “Carlton” vice ring.
It is members of the Carlton ring who allegedly procured sex workers — including Jade — for the entourage of Strauss-Kahn, who threw group parties for the disgraced former finance minister in Paris, Brussels and Washington.
Jade, bespectacled and with a brunette bob, dressed in neutral colours with a scarf wrapped tightly around her neck, burst into tears several times as she told how she had been forced to take up vices to support her two young children after her divorce.
She explained how Rene Kojfer, 74, former public relations manager for the Carlton and her employer Dominique Alderweireld, a notorious bad place owner in Belgium just across the border who is known as “Dodo the Pimp” would organise for her and other women to attend lunchtime parties at a private Lille apartment.
The judge asked her directly what she was paid for: “Well, I wasn’t there doing the cleaning”, she retorted.
“There were physical relations but each person had a partner, there was no grouping where everyone gets involved, the men made their choice,” she said, describing a “classy” environment with drinks and a buffet.
This is in comparison to the parties with Strauss-Kahn, which she described during the investigation as “carnage with a heap of mattresses on the floor”, according to prosecution sources.
As such the trial focused on who paid whom, and who gave the orders.
On one occasion, Jade said Kojfer —accused of setting up local businessmen and police officials with women — handed her cash directly, and in other cases the bill was settled by “Dodo”.
She claimed Kojfer paid the girls much less than promised, saying “times are hard”, adding “but we got a free bathrobe”.
Kojfer denies the charge of “aggravated procurement”, saying he was merely doing a service for his friends by introducing them to the women he knew.
Strauss-Kahn said on Monday he had never set foot in the Carlton and did not know Kojfer and “Dodo”.
The trial is the latest in a series of cases offering a peek behind the bedroom door of a man once tipped as a potential challenger to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
France was stunned when it saw Strauss-Kahn paraded handcuffed in front of the world’s cameras after a New York hotel maid accused him of assault in May 2011 — a case that was eventually settled in a civil suit.
Strauss-Kahn admits to being a “libertine” who took part in vice parties, but denies knowing that the women at the parties were sex workers.
“In these circumstances one isn’t always clothed, and I challenge you to tell the difference between a sex worker without clothes and any other woman without clothes,” Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer Henri Leclerc, 84, said in 2011.
The economist nonetheless finds himself facing 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $1.7 million (1.5 million euros) for “aggravated procurement in an organised group”, with investigating judges arguing he played a role in initiating the group parties and organising the presence of the sex workers. — AFP.
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