Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is to be quizzed by police next week about his involvement in a suspected prostitution ring, a police source said Saturday.

The former French finance minister will be questioned on Tuesday over the alleged supply of prostitutes to sex parties in Paris and Washington, which Strauss-Kahn is believed to have attended.

He is to be taken into custody and interviewed for up to 48 hours. Strauss-Kahn could then face charges if magistrates deem he was aware that the women who took part in the parties were prostitutes and the funds used to pay them were fraudulently obtained, as is being alleged against other suspects.

Local businessmen and a police commissioner are among several people charged thus far with organizing the ring, which is said to have operated out of luxury hotels in the northern French city of Lille. There are also suspicions that a French construction company executive used company funds to hire the prostitutes

Strauss-Kahn had demanded to be interviewed in the Lille case, hoping to halt what his lawyers have called a "media lynching" in the wake of two highly publicized rape allegations against him.

Once tipped as a likely contender against French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the upcoming elections, Strauss-Kahn resigned as IMF chief in May last year after he was accused of attempting to rape a chambermaid in a New York Hotel.

He returned to France in August after the US case collapsed, only to face fresh attempted-rape accusations from a 32-year-old Parisian writer. Prosecutors deemed the case too old to pursue, however, and the case was dropped.

He still faces a civil suit from the New York hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo.

ccp/ng (AFP, Reuters)