French law permits police to question Strauss-Kahn for up to 96 hours with a judge’s approval.
Strauss-Kahn lived in the US capital while he was head of the IMF, before resigning his position in May after he was charged by New York police with making a hotel maid perform oral sex. The charges were later dropped.
Two men with ties to Strauss-Kahn are being investigated for allegedly organizing a prostitution ring and possible misuse of corporate funds.
Strauss-Kahn’s name surfaced in the investigation last fall and his lawyer has asked that his client be allowed to tell his side of the story. One of Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers has said his client never knew that the women at orgies he attended were prostitutes.
“He could easily not have known, because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you’re not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman,’’ Henri Leclerc told French radio Europe 1 in December.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, has been married for two decades to journalist Anne Sinclair.
French newspapers have dubbed the investigation “The Carlton Affair’’ after the name of the expensive Lille hotel where some of the meetings took place.
Investigators are seeking to discover whether prostitutes were paid using corporate funds from a large French construction company, Eiffage.
The case is unconnected to the attempted rape accusations in New York.
New York prosecutors dropped the case against Strauss-Kahn in August, saying the accuser had undercut her credibility by lying about her background and changing her account of her actions right after the alleged attack.
The hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo, says she was truthful about the encounter and is pursuing her claims in a lawsuit.
Strauss-Kahn has said the sexual encounter was “inappropriate’’ but consensual and not violent.
In a separate case last October, French prosecutors refused to pursue an allegation by a young French writer of attempted rape by Strauss-Kahn.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Strauss-Kahn admitted during questioning to actions amounting to sexual assault but did not send the case to trial because it happened too long ago. Writer Tristane Banon said Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her during a 2003 interview for a book she was writing, when she was 23.
