Strauss-Kahn prosecutors seek to have sex charges dropped

The Carlton affair is the last major inquiry Mr Strauss-Kahn faces

French prosecutors are seeking to have charges dropped against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a case involving a hotel prostitution ring.

Charges against Mr Strauss-Kahn and another man "were not sufficient", the prosecutors said in a statement.

Mr Strauss-Kahn had faced charges of "aggravated pimping".

He has admitted attending sex parties in northern France, but says he did not know that some of the women present were paid prostitutes.

The investigating judge in the case will now decide whether or not to drop the prosecution.

The legal proceedings - in what is known as the Carlton affair after the Lille hotel in which the alleged orgies took place - are the last the former Socialist presidential hopeful faces over his sexual behaviour.

At the end of 2012, he reached a settlement with a hotel maid who had accused him of sexual assault.

Mr Strauss-Kahn had been accused of trying to rape Nafissatou Diallo in a hotel in New York in May 2011.

The civil case was settled for an undisclosed sum. A criminal investigation was dropped by US prosecutors last year.

Other cases against him have already been dropped.

In October, French prosecutors ended an investigation into allegations of gang rape at a hotel in Washington after the woman who made the claim retracted her evidence.

Magistrates also dropped a sexual assault case brought by French author Tristane Banon on the grounds that the alleged incident had taken place too long ago, in 2003.