The head of the International Monetary Fund has threatened Nicolas Sarkozy with legal action over a dirty tricks campaign that, he claims, the French leader's lieutenants have mounted to discredit him as a potential rival in the next presidential election. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French Socialist politician who heads the IMF in Washington, took Sarkozy to task over the spread of rumours about his alleged extramarital exploits when they met during a G20 summit in Pittsburgh on September 25. According to one account, an indignant Strauss-Kahn erupted in fury at Sarkozy when he bumped into him in the lavatory. He told the French leader that he was fed up with gossip about his private life and talk of photographs of him with women that the Elysée Palace supposedly could use to smear him in an election campaign. "I know that all of it comes from the Elysée," he told a dumbfounded Sarkozy, according to Le Point magazine. "Tell your boys to stop it or I'll go to court."
The head of the International Monetary Fund has threatened Nicolas Sarkozy with legal action over a dirty tricks campaign that, he claims, the French leader's lieutenants have mounted to discredit him as a potential rival in the next presidential election.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French Socialist politician who heads the IMF in Washington, took Sarkozy to task over the spread of rumours about his alleged extramarital exploits when they met during a G20 summit in Pittsburgh on September 25.
According to one account, an indignant Strauss-Kahn erupted in fury at Sarkozy when he bumped into him in the lavatory. He told the French leader that he was fed up with gossip about his private life and talk of photographs of him with women that the Elysée Palace supposedly could use to smear him in an election campaign.
"I know that all of it comes from the Elysée," he told a dumbfounded Sarkozy, according to Le Point magazine. "Tell your boys to stop it or I'll go to court."
