Five things you may not know about Dominique Strauss-Kahn

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund – a title which given events late last year arguably ranks him higher than, say, Enda Kenna in Ireland’s decision-making hierarchy – has found himself in hot water in the US, where he faces charges of attempted rape, a criminal sex act and unlawful imprisonment following allegations by a hotel maid.

DSK, as he's popularly known in his native France, is one of the head men of the so-called troika which has been vetting the Department of Finance's checks and balances for the last six months. Here are five things you may not know about him.

1. He’s a Socialist, but a rich one...

Strauss-Kahn is the best known of the Socialist clan. A Finance Minister in Lionel Jospin’s Leftist regime for two years in the late 1990s, he was keen to go forward for the presidential election in 2006 but missed out on the nomination to Ségolène Royal, who went on to lose out to Nicolas Sarkozy. Despite his populist Socialist leanings, he earns in the region of $500,000 per annum as the head honcho in the band of international bankers and money-men known as the IMF.

2. Although he doesn’t like money. Not really.

Despite a Porsche, an expensive apartment in Paris and a luxury holiday home in Morocco, Dominique is certainly not driven by sackfuls of lovely cash. “If I liked money, I would have chosen a different career where I might have made millions,” he told Paris Match last year. And the ironic thing is that he’s probably right - half-a-mill a year is a pittance in international finance terms...

3. This isn’t the first 'sexy time' scandal to haunt him

A French journalist called Tristane Banon accused Strauss-Kahn in 2007 of attempting to rape her five years previously, but in the eventuality she did not press charges. A year later, it was revealed that he had an affair with a lady called Piroska Nagy, the wife of a well-known economist. He made a public apology for the affair, which resulted in him being branded “Le Grand Séducteur” by one prominent French newspaper.

4. But he remains a married man, having tied the knot with France’s Anne Doyle

Doyle, our own ageing sex symbol (well, she is to some), is famously unmarried but apart from that the comparisons are valid. Strauss-Kahn’s better half is Anne Sinclair, a 62-year-old known throughout France for her role as host of 7/7, one of the most noted current affairs shows on national television station TF1.

Aren't they lovely?

She stepped down in 1997 in order to avoid any conflict of interest due to her marriage to DSK, and went on to found a successful production company. For the past four years she’s been by his side in Washington.

5. He was expected to wipe the floor with Sarko

In January, despite there being no confirmation that Strauss-Kahn was even certain to put his name forward for the 2012 French presidential elections, the French public made it known where their preference lay: a significant majority of 64 per cent polled said they would vote for the IMF chief instead of incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. DSK’s supporters claim that events in New York at the weekend are part of a plot to scupper his presidential ambitions.