Dominique Strauss Kahn is International Monetary Fund ( IMF ) head and managing director. He was arrested by New York Police today for an sexual assault on hotel maid.

Who is Strauss Kahn and how his journey to the IMF director position?

Strauss Kahn was a key person in France's economic recovery in late 1990s. He known as "DSK" served in a Socialist government as Finance Minister between 1997 and 1999. He made France qualify for the euro by cutting country's deficit and also, made some state firms privatized in France.

He was forced to resign from Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's government in 1999 after he was caught up in a corruption scandal. A court later cleared him.

Strauss-Kahn lost out on the Socialist nomination for the French presidential election in 2006 but was surprisingly proposed as a candidate to run the International Monetary Fund by the eventual winner, Nicolas Sarkozy, a political rival.

Since taking over the IMF, Strauss-Kahn has won praise for making sure the Fund was at the center of global efforts to cope with the financial meltdown of 2007-09 and introduced sweeping changes at the global institution to help countries in need. He has also overseen changes that have given emerging market countries greater voting power in the institution.

Strauss-Kahn is no stranger to controversy about his private and public life. He was investigated by the IMF in 2008 over possible abuse of power involving an affair with a senior IMF economist who subsequently left the fund. The probe cleared him of abuse of power and he apologized publicly for "a serious error of judgment."

Despite being based in Washington, he has continued to spend a lot of time in France, fanning speculation that he is considering re-entering politics as a Socialist candidate for the next presidential election in France in 2012.

( Source: Reuters)