JNN 15 May 2011 : International Monetary Fund (IMF) Director General Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been formally charged with sexual assault after attacking a maid in a New York hotel, police say.

The charges included “criminal sexual act, unlawful emprisonment, attempted rape” and “assaulting a 32-year-old girl in a hotel room,” Ryan Sesa, a police deputy spokesman, told reporters.

Strauss-Kahn was arrested earlier on Saturday after being taken off an Air France passenger plane at a New York airport, just as the plane was preparing for take off.

He was accused of a “sex attack” on a maid at a Times Square hotel earlier in the day.

The Port Authority officers were informed by the New York Police Department, whose detectives had been investigating report of a brutal attack on a woman employee at the hotel Sofitel New York, in the heart of the city’s theater district.

Strauss-Kahn was scheduled to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Sunday to discuss an aid package for debt-laden Greece.

He was then due to attend a meeting of EU finance ministers on Monday and Tuesday in Brussels.

Strauss-Kahn is a former economics professor and was being touted as a prospective candidate for the Socialist Party in their challenge to incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy in the April 2012 French presidential election.

Married to a prominent television news reporter, Strauss-Kahn was enmeshed in a controversy after accusations arose about his sexual relationship with a senior official of the IMF’s Africa Department in 2008.

The IMF is the intergovernmental organization that oversees the global financial system through the macroeconomic policies of its member countries.