Strauss-Kahn was forced to resign as head of the IMF after he was arrested in New York in May over accusations he had raped a hotel maid. The charges have since been dropped.
"I am shocked when I read that entire conspiracy theories are being concocted just because Mr Strauss-Kahn lost his phone," Gueant tells the paper, referring to an article that suggested the former IMF chief had been set up. "Mr Strauss-Kahn was not being spied on by the French police, it is scandalous to suggest that today."
The maid, Nafissatou Diallo, has been accused of being part of a conspiracy to smear the French politician and a book by a French journalist insinuates that she may have stolen an IMF-issued Blackberry mobile phone.
In France, Strauss-Kahn's name has been linked to a judicial investigation into a prostitution ring operating out of luxury hotels in the northern French city of Lille and a string of Belgian brothels.
On Wednesday, members of Parliament will discuss a bill that would make prostitution a crime punishable by six months in prison. Anyone caught buying sex would face a €3000 ($5170) fine.
In the busy Rue Saint-Denis, a famed red light area, the prospect of forthcoming legislation was of little concern last week. The average age of a Parisian prostitute is said to be 40, although the age range here appears to be wide. Most are propped up in tatty doorways, or lolling on the walls between cheap clothing wholesalers, sex shops, a church and a nursery school. They share the pavements with the Indian parcel runners with their metal trolleys, curious tourists trying not to stare, parents waiting to collect children and, presumably, the punters the bill would outlaw.
The women, among the 20,000 said to work as prostitutes in France, are mostly French, independent, own their own studio flats and pay taxes. They consider themselves a higher class of working girl than the Africans, Ukrainians, and Moldovans they accuse of invading their patch and the Oriental workers who hang around the nearby boulevards.
Christiane, who says she has been working the area for 39 years, is sceptical about the proposed new law.
"It's just blah, blah, blah, because there's an election coming up. They'll forget about us afterwards," she says.
"I own my own apartment, I pay my taxes, what are they going to do? It's not us they're after, it's them," she nods in the direction of the Asian prostitutes.
Sylvie adds: "It's the old independent prostitutes like us who will suffer, not the pimps who exploit the black people and the Chinese."
Several of the prostitutes plan to demonstrate outside the National Assembly when the bill has its first reading on Wednesday.
- AFP, OBSERVER
