IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn: denied bail in New York

On May 14, 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was pulled from the first-class cabin of an Air France flight minutes before it was to depart New York for Paris. Police arrested him over allegations that he had sexually assaulted a housekeeper in his suite at the Sofitel hotel near Times Square earlier that day.

Two days later, a Manhattan judge denied him bail and he was sent to Rikers Island. Prosecutors had argued he was a flight risk; his defense team, led by attorney Benjamin Brafman, had offered $1 million bail and promised he would remain in New York. Strauss-Kahn pleaded not guilty to charges including attempted rape, criminal sexual act, sexual abuse, unlawful imprisonment, and forcible touching.

The fallout was immediate and enormous. At 62, Strauss-Kahn was the presumed Socialist frontrunner for the 2012 French presidency against incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy — French polls had him beating Sarkozy head-to-head. He resigned from the IMF on May 18, four days after his arrest. The Fund named its second-in-command, John Lipsky, as acting managing director; France's finance minister, Christine Lagarde, was chosen to succeed him permanently in late June.

But the criminal case did not hold. In August 2011, Manhattan prosecutors moved to dismiss all charges, citing concerns about the complainant's credibility on collateral matters that left them unable to prove the case. A civil lawsuit filed by the housekeeper was settled in December 2012 on undisclosed terms, without any admission of liability.

The episode ended Strauss-Kahn's political career and remains one of the most consequential scandals in the IMF's history — a case in which the arrest was global news, and the dismissal, months later, far less so.