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Paris. Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn inched closer on Tuesday to having US sex assault charges against him dropped, but a complaint of assault in France could pose a further hurdle to any political comeback.

The New York Post cited an unnamed senior investigator as saying prosecutors would drop their charges at a court hearing in two weeks, or even earlier, due to doubts about the credibility of the alleged victim.

“Her credibility is so bad now, we know we cannot sustain a case with her,” the newspaper quoted its source as saying, referring to the Guinean hotel maid who accused Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her in a hotel in Manhattan.

“She is not to be believed in anything that comes out of her mouth — which is a shame, because now we may never know what happened in that hotel room,” the source said. The newspaper said its source was at the center of the investigation.

However, a legal complaint by French writer Tristane Banon, who alleges Strauss-Kahn tried to assault her in Paris in 2003, was to be filed later on Tuesday, her lawyer said. Banon, 31, said on a 2007 television program that she had been attacked five years earlier by a politician who she had interviewed for a book in his apartment. She later identified the man as Strauss-Kahn.

“It finished very violently,” she said on the television show. “I kicked him. He opened my bra. He tried to undo my jeans. It finished very badly.”

Lawyer David Koubbi said Banon had been dissuaded from filing charges by her mother, a regional councilor in Strauss-Kahn’s Socialist party. Her mother, Anne Mansouret, admitted in a French television interview in May that she had urged her daughter not to file a complaint after the incident.

Banon came forward again after Strauss-Kahn’s May 14 arrest in New York, but Koubbi said his client had no intention of pressing charges while the American prosecution was going on because the two cases should be kept separate.

Banon is now moving forward, Koubbi said, denying that the decision was connected to the weakening of the US case. “It is all the same to me what happens in the hours and days to come in the United States,” he said.

Banon told French news magazine L’Express that she was tired of hearing “lies and rumors” told about the incident in 2003 with the former IMF chief. “I can’t take it anymore hearing that I must be lying because I haven’t filed suit,” she said.

The Banon case may fizzle out after a preliminary inquiry, due to lack of evidence. But opinion polls since the weekend suggest that more than half of French voters think Strauss-Kahn’s political career is already over. Signs that the US charges are unravelling have set off a round of political sparring that threatens to poison the run-up to an April 2012 presidential election that Strauss-Kahn had been tipped to win for the left until his arrest in May.

French left-wingers, furious their star candidate has been all but knocked out of the election race, dismissed the Banon case as more evidence that Strauss-Kahn’s foes are determined to bring him down.

“Strauss-Kahn’s destiny has been snatched from him,” said Socialist deputy Jean-Christophe Cambadelis. “All his friends are asking how it is possible that a man who is director of the IMF and a presidential candidate finds himself in prison a few days before he submits his candidacy. This is clearly a conspiracy against the Socialist Party.”

Asked about Banon’s allegation, Cambadelis said: “This is manipulation by a young woman who wants to extort funds from Dominique through a rape complaint.” Koubbi defended his client, and the timing of her action. She told French television that talk of a plot against Strauss-Kahn was “nonsense.”

Francois Hollande, the left’s new election front-runner, was dragged into the imbroglio on Tuesday, when he was asked during a trip to the French Caribbean island of Martinique to respond to Banon’s allegation that he had known about the 2003 incident and encouraged her at the time to press charges. “I really want to put a stop to this controversy, rumors and gossip,” Hollande told reporters. “This is all becoming quite unbearable.”

A judge released Strauss-Kahn from house arrest on Friday, although charges of attempted rape remained in place, after prosecutors said the hotel maid changed details of her story.

In Banon’s case, a prosecutor can conduct a preliminary investigation to determine if there is enough evidence to support charges. Preliminary charges are followed by a lengthier investigation, sometimes lasting years, to determine if the case should go to trial.

AP, Reuters