BELGRADE, Serbia — Former International Monetary Fund chief
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who faces aggravated pimping charges in France, will
serve as an economic adviser for Serbia’s top officials, the Balkan country’s
deputy prime minister said.
Aleksandar Vucic told state television late Thursday that
Strauss-Kahn will advise him and Serbia’s prime minister and finance minister
on restructuring the country’s large foreign debt.
Vucic, a powerful Serbian politician, asserted that the
charges against Strauss-Kahn did not tarnish his reputation as a financial
expert. To claim they have, Vucic said, would be as illogical as saying Pablo
Picasso’s abilities as a painter should be judged by his unfair treatment of
some of the women and children in his life.
The French case revolves around an alleged hotel
prostitution ring and hinges on whether Strauss-Kahn knew he was partying with
prostitutes and whose money was used to pay them. His lawyers have said
Strauss-Kahn had attended “libertine” gatherings but did not know that some
women there were paid.
No trial date has been set for Strauss-Khan and 13 other
people in France, a country where it is not illegal to pay for sex, but it is
against the law to solicit or to run a prostitution business.
The case put Strauss-Kahn, 64, back in the spotlight after
his arrest in New York in May 2011, based on allegations by a Manhattan hotel
maid that he had sexually assaulted her. He resigned as IMF chief before those
charges were dropped.
Vucic said that former Austrian Chancellor Alfred
Gusenbauer, who worked as a consultant for Kazakh President Nursultan
Nazarbayev, will become Serbian government’s political adviser.
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