Prostitute allegations don’t deter NY investigators

New York prosecutors will continue investigating sex assault allegations made by a maid against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn despite allegations his accuser was a prostitute.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office reportedly isn’t ready to dismiss sexual assault charges over the revelation.

‘We’re going to complete our investigation,’’ Daniel R. Alonso, chief assistant district attorney, is reported by Bloomberg News as saying.

There is no evidence to support a report by the New York Post, citing defense sources, that Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, a hotel housekeeper from Guinea, is a prostitute or targeted him for financial gain, Alonso reportedly said.

Prosecutors, have done ‘‘everything by the book’’, he said.

Alonso declined to comment on whether the maid might be charged with perjury.

Strauss-Kahn, 62,  was released on July 1 from home confinement after the woman was interviewed on June 9 and admitted she had made false claims including that she had been gang-raped by solders in her native Guinea, prosecutors said.

He is still facing charges of sexual assault and attempted rape. His $1 million bail and $5 million bond were ordered returned. He still has not had his passport returned.

The economist and politician, who was a possible Socialist Party candidate to challenge French President Nicolas Sarkozy next year, is scheduled to return to court July 18.

According to a letter dated June 30 and filed in court July 1 by prosecutors, the housekeeper lied to a grand jury about her actions right after the alleged attack, as well as on her tax returns and in an application for asylum.

She also had stated that she and her husband had been persecuted and harassed by the dictatorial regime then in power in Guinea.

Meanwhile, voter polls had shown Strauss-Kahn as the potential candidate with the best chance of beating Sarkozy in next May’s general election.

But the possibility of a political return by Strauss-Kahn divides French public opinion, according to a poll published in the daily Le Parisien yesterday.

Of 1,000 people surveyed, 49 percent said he should come back to political life one day, while 45 percent said he shouldn’t.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn will have to decide whether he wants to be a candidate in the French Socialist Party’s presidential primary, regardless of the calendar set for formal registration, if he is fully cleared by the U.S. justice system, said Harlem Desir, the interim party leader.

“It’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn who will decide himself how he wants to participate in public life when he is able to,” Desir said yesterday on LCI television. “No one has the intention to prevent someone, no matter who it is, from being a candidate.”