Profile: Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Revered for his economic acumen and admired for his political nous and powers of persuasion, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has made a name for himself in the grandest salons of international finance.

Once an academic, once a French finance minister, the charming, witty 62-year-old head of the International Monetary Fund was spoken about in reverential tones by those who studied and worked with him.

His appointment as IMF chief in 2007 came a year before the descent into global financial crisis heralded an unprecedented period of instability.

Since then he was widely credited with transforming the US-based IMF into a key player in the unfolding financial and economic turmoil back in Europe.

With eurozone members struggling to agree on the best way to fix the damage - and limit the contagion - from the crises in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the IMF, and Mr Strauss-Kahn, had come to the fore.

Given his high profile, Mr Strauss-Kahn had come to be seen as a realistic and popular potential challenger to Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency in 2012.

But charges of attempted rape in a New York hotel have brought all that to a halt, for now.

'Seduced with words'

Born in 1949 to left-wing Jewish parents, Mr Strauss-Kahn spent his early years in Morocco, leaving with his family after a devastating earthquake in 1960.

He studied law and economics in Paris during and after the famed protests of 1968, eventually becoming an academic known for his diligence and professionalism at the University of Nancy and, later, the University of Paris.

His economics emphasised the practical, overlooking the most radical ideas of the Vietnam student movement while sympathising with the anti-war aims.

In person, Mr Strauss-Kahn also confounded the expectations of those who saw academics as fusty, bookish sorts.

His easy charm won him fans on the lecture circuit, and his reputation for good looks and a way with words followed him around for most of his career.

"He seduced with words," one French journalist told the BBC earlier this year.

In politics, though, Dominique Strauss-Kahn seemed prepared to work for his rewards, taking up a seat in France's National Assembly for the town of Sarcelles, just outside Paris.

His work in Sarcelles, described as a "challenging" town, won him social credibility.

After a stint as industry minister he was appointed finance minister in Lionel Jospin's Socialist government in 1998, responsible for steering France towards the era of the euro.

Controversy forced him from office by 2000, though, as he faced accusations - of which he eventually cleared - of corruption and financial scandal.

Checkmate?

He sought national prominence again in 2006 but lost out to Segolene Royal in the battle to become the Socialist Party candidate for president.

When he re-emerged in 2007 as the new man at the helm of the IMF, Mr Strauss-Kahn's reputation as a ladies' man was not far behind him.

In 2008 he was censured by the organisation when he was found to have had an affair with a Hungarian economist.

She left the IMF but Mr Strauss-Kahn stayed on, and stayed married to his wife, the American-French journalist Anne Sinclair, whom he wed in 1991.

Asked about his personal life, those who know Mr Strauss-Kahn - nicknamed Chaud Lapin (literally Hot Rabbit) by some - suggest that he may have benefited from the traditional French reluctance to probe the private lives of public figures.

He continued to win praise at the IMF, with one colleague who recently left the organisation comparing his political skill to that of a "top-level chess player".

"The man is an absolutely brilliant political operator," Simon Johnson said in a recent BBC profile of Mr Strauss-Kahn.

Now facing charges of alleged rape, criminal sexual assault and attempted imprisonment in the New York courts, Dominique Strauss-Kahn faces his biggest challenge yet - to clear his name.

Source: bbc.co.uk