DSK Aggravated Pimping Trial Begins
QUEST (voice-over): Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on trial today in France.</s>QUEST (voice-over): The former head of the International Monetary Fund is charged with aggravated pimping -- I never thought I'd be saying that on QUEST MEANS BUSINESS. He allegedly engaged in group sex with prostitutes during soirees organized with the help of a businessman hoping that he would get favors when he became president of France. It has got sleaze written all over it and we have only just begun with the trial. I asked our senior international correspondent, Jim Bittermann, who joined me from Paris, what happened in court.</s>JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT: One of the first things that happened was that the lawyers for a number of those people involved in this trial asked that the trial take place behind closed doors and the first thing that the court did was decide that that is not going to be the case. This is going to be an open court and we're going to hear all of the lurid testimony come out, 14 accused; among them, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The four prostitutes were in court today and basically the charge against Strauss-Kahn and the others is that they organized sex parties, debauchery; Strauss-Kahn does not deny that he took part in these parties but that he says that he didn't know that these were prostitutes that were involved. And that's where the legal case is going to be billed. The fact is that his defense is that if he doesn't know that they're prostitutes, if they're just parties and he was participating, he has done nothing illegal. But if he in any way encouraged the parties to take place, then he may be guilty of what they're saying -- Richard.</s>QUEST: Now he's not accused of organizing the parties, is he? He's accused of -- or he attended them.</s>BITTERMANN: Well, he attended, but he's accused of organizing them. He's accused of encouraging them. And to what extent he encouraged them, whether he told his friends he'd like to have a wild night or something like that, that's what the case is going to be founded on because that, under the definition of law in France for aggravated pimping, that qualifies as aggravated pimping. The fact is, though, that -- why he's a little ambiguous on this and it's one of the things that'll come in this trial, I think -- Richard.</s>QUEST: Right, Jim, I'm sure you've studied this law in some detail in preparation for this case. But are the French public, is the French public as -- watching this as closely and with as much voyeurism as maybe the international media?</s>BITTERMANN: I think they -- this time around they are, Richard. I think mainly because of the fact that they've seen someone who had risen to such heights now sitting on the bank of the -- bench of the accused along with people like Dodo la Saumure, who's -- makes no bones about the fact that he runs houses of prostitution in Belgium and a number of other sort of nefarious characters that are right there along with Strauss-Kahn. So I think they're watching it in a -- and it's kind of fascination to have seen the depths to which someone who was flying so high, who -- you'll remember, Richard -- was the leading candidate, the leading socialist candidate for president, might well have been elected president if all this had not come out first in New York and now here.</s>QUEST: Jim Bittermann in Paris; the trial continues in France. We'll follow it closely. President Obama says why should the rich keep getting richer while the middle class Americans lose ground? He's got a $4 trillion budget and a proposal to do something about it. And you'll hear it after the break.