Former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn became famous when he was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel worker in New York in May. The charges were later dropped. Now a new book about French politicians' genealogies makes an ironic claim: that Strauss-Kahn's great-great-grandfather ran a brothel.
The book, called Le Tout-Politique (All Politicians), claims that Strauss-Kahn's ancestor, Léon Bricot, was a violin teacher who also ran a hotel in Lons-le-Saunier in the eastern Franche-Comté region. The hotel allegedly doubled as a "maison close," or a house of ill-repute. Bricot had an unfortunate end after he shot and killed a soldier customer who had become troublesome, resulting in him ending his days in prison.
The book examines the pasts of 89 leading personalities in France, including President Sarkozy, Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande and far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen.
You can read more (in French) at Le Figaro at http://goo.gl/7EKON. A machine-generated translation of the article, complete with several translation errors, may be found at http://goo.gl/2UJnw.
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