NEW YORK: Lawyers for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former IMF chief, shot down reports Friday that he was ready to pay $6 million to a Manhattan maid accusing him of sexual assault -- but confirmed that he was negotiating.
In a statement seeking to dampen media speculation over an out-of-court settlement of the maid's civil suit, the lawyers stressed that Strauss-Kahn was talking, but had yet to ink a deal.
"The parties have discussed a resolution but there has been no settlement. Mr Strauss-Kahn will continue to defend the charges if no resolution can be reached," attorneys William Taylor and Amit Mehta said in a brief statement.
The attorneys repeated an earlier denial of a report in French daily Le Monde specifying that Strauss-Kahn, once seen as France's likely next president, was prepared to pay off Sofitel room cleaning lady Nafissatou Diallo.
"Media reports that Dominique Strauss-Kahn has agreed to pay $6 million to settle the civil case are flatly false," Taylor and Mehta said.
According to Le Monde, Strauss-Kahn was to raise the money by borrowing $3 million from a bank and the rest from his estranged wife, Anne Sinclair, a well-known former newsreader who inherited a fortune from her art dealer father.
Diallo's legal team did not comment, but an earlier statement from Strauss-Kahn's legal team had already called the Le Monde report "imaginary and mistaken."
The latest statement did make official that Strauss-Kahn is negotiating with Diallo to end the sordid 18-month legal saga, a development first reported late Thursday by The New York Times, quoting unidentified sources.
Until now, Strauss-Kahn's lawyers repeatedly said they would not agree to a deal, while Diallo's legal team insisted she wanted her day in court to confront her alleged abuser.
Judge Douglas McKeon, who is presiding over the civil case in New York, told AFP "there may be a court session as early as next week," but declined to comment further.
Diallo's allegation of attempted rape in May 2011 triggered a stunning fall from grace for Strauss-Kahn, who had been seen as close to announcing he would run in an upcoming French presidential election.
Criminal charges were thrown out when Manhattan prosecutors said Diallo's testimony wouldn't stand up in court. She then filed her own civil lawsuit in a Bronx court, alleging that the 63-year-old leapt on her, naked, and forced her into oral sex.
Strauss-Kahn, who says a hurried but consensual sex act took place in his luxury room, returned immediately to France after the criminal case disintegrated.
However, by then Strauss-Kahn's career was in tatters, his marriage was on the rocks and he soon faced a string of other sex-related investigations by French authorities.
In France, Strauss-Kahn will learn December 19 if he is to face further investigation into pimping charges arising from allegations that he and associates arranged sex parties with prostitutes in the northern French city of Lille.
His lawyers have filed a request for the charges to be dismissed.
French prosecutors last month dropped an investigation into Strauss-Kahn's alleged participation in a gang rape after the woman involved said she had consented and was not pressing charges.
Strauss-Kahn has also been accused by 32-year-old author Tristane Banon of trying to rape her in 2002.
French investigating magistrates questioned Strauss-Kahn and his accuser and concluded that while there appeared to be evidence of a sexual assault, the alleged attack had occurred too long ago to be prosecuted.
-AFP/ac
Strauss-Kahn, maid don't have deal yet: lawyers
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Strauss-Kahn, maid don't have deal yet: lawyers
