Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn (French: [dɔminik stʁos kan]; born 25 April 1949), also known as DSK, is a French economist and politician who served as the tenth managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and was a member of the French Socialist Party. He attained international notoriety due to his involvement in several sex scandals. Strauss-Kahn was a professor of economics at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense and Sciences Po, and was Minister of Economy and Finance from 1997 to 1999, as part of Lionel Jospin's Plural Left government. He sought the nomination in the Socialist Party presidential primary of 2006, but was defeated by Ségolène Royal.
Strauss-Kahn was appointed managing director of the IMF on 28 September 2007, with the backing of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He served in that capacity until his resignation on 18 May 2011, in the wake of an allegation that he had sexually assaulted a hotel maid; the charges were later dismissed. Other sexual allegations followed, and resulted in acquittals. These accusations were seen as controversial in France, and prompted prominent conspiracy theories, as well as a debate on the role of the media in debating and determining a suspect's guilt ahead of conviction or legal proceedings having even been initiated. Numerous photos of the handcuffed Strauss-Kahn were banned from publication under French laws, while their publication in the United States prompted outrage.
These legal cases led Strauss-Kahn to drop out of the 2012 French presidential election, where he had been the favorite to win the Socialist Party's nomination (the party's eventual candidate, François Hollande, won the presidential election), and put an end to Strauss-Kahn's political career. He then resumed his activities in the private sector, mainly advising governments on their sovereign debts.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn was born on 25 April 1949 in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine. He is the son of lawyer Gilbert Strauss-Kahn. Strauss-Kahn's father was born to an Alsatian Jewish father while Strauss-Kahn's mother is from a Sephardic Jewish family in Tunisia. He and his parents settled in Morocco in 1951, but after the 1960 earthquake moved to Monaco, where his father practised law. While the family was living in Monaco, Strauss-Kahn went to school at the Lycée Albert Premier. The family later returned to Paris, where he attended classes préparatoires at the Lycée Carnot. He graduated from HEC Paris in 1971 and from Sciences Po and the Paris Institute of Statistics in 1972. He failed the entrance examination for École nationale d'administration, but obtained a bachelor degree in public law, as well as a PhD and an agrégation (1977) in economics at the Université Paris X (Nanterre).
Strauss-Kahn has been married four times and has five children. His first wife was Hélène Dumas, whom he married in 1967 when he was 18 and she was 20. The marriage lasted sixteen years and produced three children — Vanessa (1973), Marine (1976), and Laurin (1981) — but ended in divorce. Strauss-Kahn married his second wife, Brigitte Guillemette, a public relations executive, in 1986. Their daughter, Camille, was born in 1985. His third wife (married 1991) was Anne Sinclair, a popular French journalist, TV anchor, and heiress, the granddaughter of art dealer Paul Rosenberg. This marriage barely survived Strauss-Kahn's tenure at the IMF and the highly publicized allegations of sexual assault in 2011. In 2012, the press announced Sinclair and Strauss-Kahn's separation. Their divorce was finalized in 2013. In 2017, Strauss-Kahn married Myriam L'Aouffir, a digital communications expert. Strauss-Kahn also has an American son, Darius, born in 2010, as a result of an affair while he was serving as Director General of the IMF in Washington DC; he was sued by the mother for €8,000 monthly child support.
From 1977 to 1981, Strauss-Kahn lectured at the University of Nancy-II, first as an assistant, and later as assistant professor, before taking a position at the University of Nanterre. In 1982, he was appointed to the Plan Commission as head of the finance department, and later as Deputy Commissioner, a position he held until his election to the National Assembly in 1986. After his ousting in the 1993 parliamentary elections, Strauss-Kahn founded DSK Consultants, a corporate law consulting firm. Upon resigning from Lionel Jospin's government he resumed his academic duties, teaching economics at Sciences Po from 2000 until his appointment to the IMF in 2007.
Strauss-Kahn was first an activist member of the Union of Communist Students, before joining in the 1970s the Centre d'études, de recherches et d'éducation socialiste (Center on Socialist Education Studies and Research, CERES) led by Jean-Pierre Chevènement, future presidential candidate at the 2002 election. There, he befriended the future Prime Minister of France Lionel Jospin (PS).
After the election of President François Mitterrand (PS) in 1981, Strauss-Kahn decided to stay out of government. He got involved in the Socialist Party (PS), which was led by Lionel Jospin, and founded Socialisme et judaïsme ("Socialism and Judaism"). The next year, he was appointed to the Commissariat au plan (Planning Commission) as commissaire-adjoint. In 1986, he was elected Member of Parliament for the first time in the Haute-Savoie department, and in 1988 in the Val-d'Oise department. He became chairman of the National Assembly Committee on Finances, famously exchanging heated words with the Finance Minister Pierre Bérégovoy (PS).
In 1991, he was nominated by Mitterrand to be Junior Minister for Industry and Foreign Trade in Édith Cresson's social-democratic government. He kept his position in Pierre Bérégovoy's government until the 1993 general elections. After the electoral defeat of 1993, Strauss-Kahn was appointed by former Prime Minister Michel Rocard chairman of the groupe des experts du PS ("Group of Experts of the Socialist Party"), created by Claude Allègre. The same year, he founded the law firm DSK Consultants, and worked as a business lawyer.
In 1994, Raymond Lévy, who was director of Renault, invited him to join the Cercle de l'Industrie, a French industry lobby in Brussels, where he met the billionaire businessman Vincent Bolloré and top manager Louis Schweitzer; Strauss-Kahn served as secretary-general and later as vice-president. This lobbyist activity earned him criticism from the alter-globalization left. In June 1995, he was elected mayor of Sarcelles and married Anne Sinclair, a famous television journalist working for the private channel TF1 and in charge of a political show, Sept sur Sept. She ceased presenting this show after Strauss-Kahn's nomination as Minister of Economics and Finance in 1997, in order to avoid conflict of interest, while Strauss-Kahn himself ceded his place as mayor to François Pupponi in order to avoid double responsibilities.
Minister for Economics, Finances and Industry
In 1997, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (PS) appointed Strauss-Kahn as Minister for Economics, Finance and Industry, making him one of the most influential ministers in his Plural Left government. Although it was in theory contrary to the Socialist Party's electoral program, he implemented a wide privatization program, which included among others the IPO of France Télécom; he also implemented some deregulation policies in the research and development sector. The French economy achieved an excellent performance during his term of office: GDP increased, whereas unemployment and public debt decreased (creation of 300,000 jobs in 1998, a level not seen since 1969). This helped to strengthen his popularity and managed to win the support of former supporters of Jospin and Michel Rocard, making him the leader of the reform-oriented group Socialisme et démocratie. Strauss-Kahn was an early proponent of reducing the working week to 35 hours, a measure implemented by Martine Aubry, Minister for Social Policies.