Sofitel staff 'celebrated' after maid reported DSK 'assault'

PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party has reacted with anger to a report in the New York Review of Books that suggests Dominique Strauss-Kahn might have been the target of a plot to “destroy him as a political force”.

Evidence gathered by the veteran investigative reporter Edward Jap Epstein suggests that Nafissatou Diallo, a maid at the Manhattan Sofitel, might have been used to entrap Strauss-Kahn. Her accusations – never proved in court - killed his chances of running against Sarkozy as the Socialist Party candidate in next year’s presidential election.

Epstein’s key points are:

1. After Diallo reported the alleged assault to her superiors on Saturday 14 May, and the police had been called, Sofitel’s chief engineer, Brian Yearwood, was caught on CCTV exchanging “high fives” with an unidentified colleague. The two men clapped their hands and did “what looks like an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes”.

2. Hotel records show that Diallo visited another room on the same floor as DSK’s suite, shortly before the sexual encounter took place. (DSK does not deny a sexual act – but claims it was consensual.) Immediately after leaving DSK’s suite at about 12.15, she returned to this room. The Sofitel has never identified the occupant.

3. As the incident unfolded in the course of 14 May, the head of security for the Accor Group which owns the Sofitel, Rene-Georges Querry, turned up in the presidential box at the State de France where Nicolas Sarkozy was watching the French cup final.

4. On the morning of 14 May, DSK was warned that a BlackBerry he used for IMF work might have been hacked because an email sent to his wife, Anne Sinclair, had been read at the UMP offices in Paris. Before he could have the BlackBerry examined, it went missing. Its circuitry was reportedly disabled within an hour of his encounter with Diallo.

Strauss-Kahn’s US lawyer, William Taylor, has asked Accor to provide a “full explanation” for the “celebration dance”. ·