FRANCE: No ban on steamy DSK kiss-and-tell, court rules

A Paris court on Tuesday ruled against a ban of a steamy kiss-and-tell book about former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn by author Marcela Iacub, but said that it must include a disclaimer.

A graphic kiss-and-tell about disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn will not be banned, a Paris court ruled on Tuesday.

It also ruled that each copy of the book, and news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, which last week published extracts, contain disclaimers.

The weekly magazine, the book's author Marcela Iacub and publishers Stock, must pay €75,000 in damages to Strauss-Kahn.

“It’s a decision that gives us satisfaction,” Richard Malka, a lawyer for Strauss-Kahn, told French news channel i>Télé.

Strauss-Kahn earlier filed legal action to block the release of the book that reveals, in steamy details, his 2012 romance with Parisian writer Iacub.

“Belle et bête,” which can be translated as “Beauty and the Beast” or “Beautiful and Stupid,” was due to hit book shops on Wednesday but a later publication date is now expected.

While Iacub sometimes expresses her admiration for Strauss-Kahn in her book, the work largely portrays him as an unfeeling, sexually-obsessed “half-man, half pig.”

Pleading with the court during the hearing on Tuesday morning, Strauss-Kahn said it was time to halt the “excesses” of book publishers and the press, which were “willing to do anything to make money”, according to Pascale Robert-Diard, a reporter from Le Monde.

“Is everything allowed in the quest to make money, to shoot a man who has already been pushed to the ground?” he asked judges.

Strauss-Kahn, 63, who was once considered the frontrunner of France’s 2012 presidential election, fell from grace in 2011 after an alleged sexual attack on a maid at a luxury Manhattan hotel.

Since returning to France he has been mired in legal proceedings linked to purported sexual crimes.

Even before its release, Iacub’s book has received wide attention in the French media.

While Iacub never mentions Strauss-Kahn by name, it is clear he is the leading man in the sordid love story. The former IMF boss filed an urgent motion against Iacub and her publisher, decrying a “violation of personal privacy”.

Source: FRANCE 24 (26/02/2013): http://www.france24.com/en/20130226-no-ban-steamy-dsk-kiss-tell-court-rules