Anna Sinclair, wife of a famous French politician, ex-head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn, does not agree with the opinion of those who believe that she should leave her husband. The 63-year-old television journalist has repeatedly been sharply criticized for not breaking off relations with Strauss-Kahn, who was at the center of a sexual scandal last May.
Recall that last year Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of attempting to rape a New York hotel maid. After that, several more women filed lawsuits against the former head of the IMF and the French presidential candidate from the Socialist Party. The plaintiffs accused the politician of sexual harassment.
In a recent interview with Elle magazine, Sinclair said she sees no point in leaving her husband: “I am not a saint and I am not a victim. I am a free woman. No one has the right to interfere in our personal life, and even more so - to condemn. Everything that concerns the family, we ourselves will decide with my husband. ”.
Upon learning that her husband was charged with attempted rape, Sinclair stated that she did not believe a single word of the accusation and was absolutely convinced of her husband's innocence.
Many in Paris believe that such unwavering loyalty to her husband will undermine Sinclair's chances of becoming editor-in-chief of the French version of the Huffington Post. According to critics, only an impartial person who can give a sound assessment of what is happening can apply for such a post.
Sinclair compared her husband's situation to a centuries-old political scandal sparked by the accusation of espionage and the conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew of the French General Staff, who was later recognized as an innocent victim of an anti-Semitic conspiracy.
“From now on, Sinclair cannot be called an impartial journalist,- stated in the editorial of Le Monde. — By comparing her husband's case to the Dreyfus case, she showed that she was an interested party.".
Born in New York, Anna Sinclair is the granddaughter of renowned art collector and dealer Paul Rosenberg. More recently, she expected to become the successor to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in the "position" of the first lady of France. Anna's hopes were dashed last May when Nafissatou Diallo, 32, a New York hotel maid, alleged that Dominique Strauss-Kahn had raped her. Shortly thereafter, the former head of the IMF was accused of sexual harassment by 32-year-old French journalist Tristan Banon. According to her, Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her in 2002.
In the case of Diallo, Strauss-Kahn was acquitted, but information about other sexual scandals involving him appears almost daily. Several prostitutes at once testify to the participation of the politician in orgies. Strauss-Kahn, in turn, does not deny connections on the side, but claims that he never used the services of prostitutes.
Anna Sinclair supports her husband not only morally, but also financially: it was she who paid all his legal expenses.
Material prepared by Sonya Bakulina
As a little girl, Anne Sinclair knew Pablo Picasso. This is a translation of an interview with Scott Simon, correspondent for NPR, about how the master wanted to paint her portrait and her new memoirs - the book "Grandfather's Gallery".
Scott Simon, host:
Few people can be asked what Pablo Picasso really was. Ann Sinclair knew him as a child. Her grandfather, Paul Rosenberg, was the most famous art dealer in Paris: his gallery had paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Breguet, Leger and other masters. Many works were stolen and destroyed when the Nazis entered Paris. Grandfather and his family left for the United States to survive after all the upheavals and return to their previous work. Anne Sinclair is one of France's most famous journalists, and she chronicles her grandfather's life in her new book, Grandfather's Gallery: A Family Memoir of Art and War. Ann is joining us from Paris. Thank you for being with us.
Ann Sinclair: Thank you.
Simon: So what was Picasso really like?
Sinclair: Picasso was great, everyone knows that. I was then still quite a teenager. If you have my book, then there you will see one photo where he looks at me with such an incredibly sharp and expressive look.
Simon: But you didn't want him to paint your portrait, did you?
Sinclair: I was 14 years old. He then told my mother that I have beautiful and big eyes all over your face. I was embarrassed by such words, cried and ran into the garden. That's why I don't have a portrait by Pablo Picasso.
Simon: If we were to enter the Paul Rosenberg Gallery in, say, 1938, what might we see there?
Sinclair: My grandfather was a pioneer in contemporary art. He had paintings by Matisse, Leger and, above all, Picasso. He led people who came to the museum to the second floor, where there were several works by Renoir, Monet and Picasso. It was a kind of excursion into the history of art through art.
Simon: And what happened then, with the arrival of the Germans in 1940?
Sinclair: The Nazis wanted to purge museums and private collections of what they considered degenerate art. Paintings have plummeted in price. Grandfather worked to prevent the sale of paintings and the receipt of money from their sales to the Nazis. So he ended up on the "black list" and was forced to hide in the United States.
Simon: What did he do after the war?
Sinclair: After the war, he decided to find the lost paintings. More than 400 paintings were hidden somewhere in a basement in the south of France. There were many galleries in Paris at that time, there were stolen art objects. Even in a small framing workshop like Real Master, which deals with framing works of art to order, then you could find real masterpieces. He walked through the galleries and pointed to his former paintings. And no one argued with him. Everyone knew about the unrest of wartime. Not without the help of the Swiss government, he filed a lawsuit against the Swiss galleries. Switzerland was then a convenient place for the resale of stolen paintings.
Simon: What prompted you to seek interesting facts from the life of your grandfather despite the fact that he questioned your French origin?
Sinclair: You know, I wanted to live on my own. I wanted to become a journalist. I did not want to become the owner of the inheritance. And when I turned 60, my mother died. I decided that I needed to go back to my roots. Indeed, these were my roots, and I am the granddaughter of my grandfather.
Simon: I didn't mean to mention your name ex-husband and what happened between you. But at the end of the book, you write that New York fascinated you as a child, and now it has become synonymous with violence and injustice for you and your family. How so?
Sinclair: These are the only pages I have written since what I would call the incident.
Simon: So you were married to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was arrested and charged with rape? And the case was closed?
Sinclair: It was painful for me and my whole family. And I had to face everything that happened head on. But please understand that it's all over now. And I got out of it all. I want to move forward and not look back.
Simon: Ann Sinclair with her new book Grandfather's Gallery: A Family Memoir of Art and War. Thank you for being with us.
Sinclair: Thanks a lot.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn passionately wanted to be the president of France and could become prime minister more than once, but every time it was not enough for this to happen. Nevertheless, the ambitious Frenchman will become the leader: it is he who is most likely to head one of the most influential world organizations - the International Monetary Fund
After the sudden resignation "for family reasons" of IMF Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato, Spaniard, the discussion of the candidacy of his successor did not last long. The finance ministers of the united Europe resolutely came up with a common initiative: Dominique Strauss-Kahn - abbreviated, as is customary among the French, DSC, should take the post of head of the fund.
Russia also nominated its candidate for this post - the former head of the Central Bank of the Czech Republic, Josef Toshovsky, until August 31, Latin American countries still have a chance to join the fight for the IMF. But Strauss-Kahn - the application is more than weighty. By tradition, the decision of the European Union is decisive in the appointment of the head of the IMF, the Americans - the post of chairman of the World Bank. In other words, the "election campaign" is coming to an end, and the Frenchman, apparently, will remain its uncontested leader. And if there is no force majeure, in October he will go to Washington.
Politician at your pleasure
"To gain worldwide fame, he lacks only disgrace." With these words began the biography of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, written in the early 90s. The book turned out to be prophetic. DSK at that time was rapidly gaining political weight. The son of Jewish immigrants who fled from Morocco to the metropolis after the earthquake in Agadir, he brilliantly graduated from the Paris Institute of Higher Political Studies and, having defended his dissertation on problems of law, became a professor of economics. And not just anywhere, but in the very high school national administration, the forge of personnel of the Fifth Republic. In parallel, DSK was engaged in consulting, in particular, economic expertise. In the field of business, he met a close group of former leftists and Trotskyists - lawyers and auditors, economists and trade unionists, whose recognized leader was Lionel Jospin. Mutual language they found from the first meeting.
In 1981, Francois Mitterrand was elected president of the republic. The most active leader of the socialists, Lionel Jospin, unexpectedly for many, refused the ministerial post offered to him and stood at the head of the party. He remembered the covenant: cadres decide everything, especially if they are recruited from trusted persons. And Jospin makes his DSK confidante the most prominent figure in the socialist nomenklatura. Later career Dominique Strauss-Kahn developed quite traditionally, according to the French practice of moving up the power ladder. First - a prominent post in the Planning Commissariat, then - election as a deputy from the Socialist Party to the National Assembly, presidency in the Commission on Finance, appointment as minister-delegate for industry and foreign trade in the governments of Edith Cresson and Pierre Beregovois ...
"Strauss-Kahn, an excellent chess player, analyst and economist, was distinguished from other representatives of Mitterrand's "young guard" by the ability to organize work without apparent tension, as if playfully," French sociologist Pierre Davez tells Itogi. and resolute, DSK immediately forced everyone to reckon with him.Epicurean and cheerful, he created a friendly, warm atmosphere around him.It is not without reason that DSK immediately built trusting relationships with the "captains" of French business.In the future, close ties with the clubs of multimillionaires always helped Strauss- Cana in difficult times.
In the elite "oligarchic" get-together, the DSK was on the board. Suffice it to recall the so-called Industrial Circle, established in the early 90s by several French millionaires to lobby the interests of the Fifth Republic in European institutions in Brussels. Dominique Strauss-Kahn began to justify the confidence placed in him so diligently that he was sharply criticized by fellow socialists who convicted his ally of "a manifestation of bourgeois liberalism."
But the Epicurean himself did not care from politics to leftist principles. Strauss-Kahn never concealed the fact that in the word "social democracy" he prefers its second part. Moreover, after the failure of the socialists in the 1993 parliamentary elections, the mysterious suicide of ex-premier Pierre Beregovoy and a series of scandals in the highest echelons of power, far from the most fertile times came for the team of Lionel Jospin. But DSK, who never lost the ability to wear expensive suits or a sly smile, was not afraid of disgrace in big politics and, true to Mitterand's principle of "giving time to time", decided to take a short time out. The way up was ahead. In the meantime, he created his own law office "DSK Consultan". And he got married. So much so that they started talking about it on both sides of the Atlantic.
Anna around the neck
"By and large, I was born only when I married Anna Sinclair," he once admitted to DSK friends. Sephard Strauss-Kahn came from an intellectual family, but little religious. Moreover, Dominik's father was, of course, a man of leftist convictions. Now the DSK has entered the Sinclair clan - the most powerful business family of Ashkenazi Jews living on both sides of the Atlantic.
As soon as they do not characterize Anna Sinclair in the French media, with whom Dominique Strauss-Kahn married in 1995 (by the way, Lionel Jospin was a witness from the groom's side). Some write that Anna is the most beautiful woman France. Others - that she is the owner of the largest salary in the journalistic world. Still others call her none other than the television Simone Signoret. Only Simone had the wayward Yves Montand, and Anna had the complaisant Dominique Strauss-Kahn. And the rest, what's the difference, the descendants of the Gauls believe: show business or business from politics? The beautiful Anna Sinclair is an excellent professional, and enjoys great influence, and raised her husband to new heights. "Anna revealed to me great spiritual wealth," he once said of his wife DSK. "She gave me the opportunity to reflect on my roots and gave me access to a new world."
Madame Sinclair is indeed an unusual woman. She looks like a character from a financial adventure novel. I met her several times, and every time she struck me with the incredible look of her bright eyes and the softness of her movements, but not only that. Anna Sinclair always radiates a sense of well-being, confidence and calmness. For ten years, journalist Anna Sinclair hosted a Sunday political and analytical program called "Seven by Seven" on the first French television channel. Any businessman and politician, including the President of the Republic, considered it an honor to come for an interview to the first television lady in France. It was said that in terms of the abundance of acquaintances in the political and business world, no one could compete with Anna Sinclair in Paris. However, not only by the wealth of ties. Born in New York, Anna is a member of a very wealthy family. So, she is the granddaughter of Paul Rosenberg, the largest collector and dealer of paintings from the middle of the last century. Among its treasures is the famous landscape by Claude Monet (during the war years, the painting was stolen by the Nazis and only in 1999 returned to the Sinclair family).
With such support, Dominique Strauss-Kahn seemed to need very little to reshape Paris. But that just didn't work out.
Yours among strangers
Professor Dominique Strauss-Kahn has many strengths. He speaks beautifully, but there are few people who are then able to read his speeches, which are too scientific and even chaotic. He gushes with ideas, but his creativity sometimes turns against him. A textbook example: the 35-hour work week introduced in France by the socialist government. The idea of this reform, which has brought so much trouble to business and greatly complicated the situation of the French economy, was once briefly mentioned by the DSC in a restaurant during lunch with Lionel Jospin. He just said, as they say, in the order of delirium, as one of the possible ways to create new jobs. And Lionel's friend, an assiduous Huguenot, between Camembert and pear moonshine, took and wrote down the professor's thoughts on a paper napkin and gave them ... for development to the government! Two or three months later, at the council of ministers, the DSK heard about the socialist program for the introduction of a 35-hour working week and grabbed his head: "Only over my corpse!" And Prime Minister Jospin answered him: "So you yourself came up with all this."
But seriously, the period from 1997 to 1999, when the DSC was Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry in the government of Jospin, most French people remember with slight nostalgia. Never before in the last quarter of a century has the national economy felt so confident. The number of unemployed decreased significantly, 300,000 new jobs were created in the trade sector. After Maastricht, a united Europe became more and more a reality. DSK enthusiastically reformed the French economy, dissected it - privatized, cut debts, established companies, brought them together, linked them together. And traveled a lot. Fortunately, there are no language difficulties for him, he speaks English, German, Spanish, and speaks Arabic. In America, in the homeland of his wife, he is generally an idol. Before him, only Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of the French finance ministers had been honored with a front-page interview in The Washington Post. It is said that once in New York, an American journalist asked the DSC to briefly characterize this period in his life. Anna Sinclair's husband, with his usual healthy cynicism, replied: "Dream time!" But, as you know, awakening is inevitable after sleep, and it was not the easiest for DSC.
In the past few years, the energetic "sweet couple" Segolene Royal and Francois Hollande have gained more and more power in the socialist party. In 2006, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, with the support of the Sinclair clan, decided to give battle to this large duet: he nominated himself as a presidential candidate from the Socialist Party.
The "primaries" ended badly for the DSK: only 20 percent of the party members who voted supported him. Most of the activists pinned their hopes on Segolene Royal. After the crushing defeat of the socialists in the elections and the installation of Nicolas Sarkozy in the Elysee Palace, the DSC was the first to demand that the party leadership sort out the reasons for the failures and punish those responsible. They didn't support him again...
But! Strauss-Kahn, being the closest friend of the socialist leader Jospin, always maintained good relations with neo-Aholist rivals. And if earlier this invariably worked against him during internal party disassemblies, now it turned out to be an advantage. New French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed Strauss-Kahn's candidacy for the post of head of the IMF. "Jacques Chirac personally approached Sarkozy with a request to nominate Strauss-Kahn for this position," independent journalist Laurent Carpentra told Itogi. According to the journalist, the former president allegedly wanted to thank the socialist minister for his loyalty in the investigation of the so-called Meri case. Its essence is that Jean-Claude Meri, a large real estate dealer, one of the "cashiers" of the neo-golist party in the 80s, dictated memoirs with revelations before his death. Mary named numbers and names, including Jacques Chirac. The latter was at that time both mayor of Paris and prime minister. So: the original cassette with Mary's dying confession was handed over personally to the DSC as the Minister of Finance. DSK not only did not look at the cassette, but even pretended to have lost it. Because of this, all current attempts by the opposition to bring the ex-president to justice are futile: the investigation cannot accept a copy as evidence against Chirac, only the original is needed.
It is unlikely that we are destined to find out if everything really happened. But it is obvious that the departure of Dominique Strauss-Kahn to the IMF suits everyone - both the ruling party and the socialists. And Sarkozy will have his own man overseas, and Royal will have fewer opponents in Paris. At the same time, "Operation DSC" is by no means a purely French action. "If it had been a purely Parisian tactical combination, there would never have been such a broad consensus on the appointment of Strauss-Kahn," said Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg. That's probably how it is.
In principle, the Russian government also has no complaints about his candidacy - by the way, in early August, Strauss-Kahn visited Moscow and met with Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. He promised to pay special attention to the reform of the quota system in the IMF, thereby strengthening the role of countries with emerging markets, and to make international exchange rate policy, which some countries often use to gain competitive advantages (a stone in China's garden), one of the fund's policy priorities. The answer to the question why Moscow has "its own" candidate is quite simple. The times when the three cherished letters "IMF" were pronounced with a breath here have sunk into oblivion. Russia no longer needs the Fund's help and does not owe it anything. Moscow in the IMF is now worried about something else: it stands for "open and transparent" elections of the managing director, in other words, for the demolition of the established system of "collusion" between the EU and the US. To begin with, by the forces of a third-party, European candidate. And there you look ... The position, after all, is quite worthy for a representative of a great power. Why not?
The wife of a professor of mineralogy and geology at St. Petersburg University, a well-known Russian soil scientist; Member of the Aid Society for those who graduated from the St. Petersburg Higher Women's (Bestuzhev) Courses. Mother - ALEXANDRA IVANOVNA SINCLAIR (survived her daughter).
Anna Egorovna began her working life as a girl. She taught classes in a small private women's boarding school, which she later became the head of. This fragile-looking young woman with a charming appearance possessed rare endurance and selflessness. She met her future husband in 1880, when he taught cosmography and physical geography at a boarding school. Anna Egorovna by that time was already the head of the boarding school, very charming, active and well educated. Over time, Anna Egorovna acquired natural science knowledge and helped her husband in his work. She died on February 2, 1897 from cancer and was buried at the Smolensk Evangelical Cemetery, section 7 (a blue marble pedestal, the cross from the tombstone was stolen in 1989, but restored in 2008. Her husband Dokuchaev V.V. very strongly experienced the death of his wife, survived her by only 6 years, died in 1903 and was buried next to her.
Dokuchaeva Anna Egorovna, born Sinclair, born November 10, 1846, died February 2, 1897 "To my unforgettable daughter" (inscription on the tombstone) (Smolensk Evangelical Cemetery) (Petersburg Necropolis, Volume 2, St. Petersburg, 1912, p. 67).
In France, went on sale a biography of the famous TV journalist Anne Sinclair - the wife of the former head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is implicated in a series of sex scandals on both sides of the Atlantic.
The authors of the book, journalists Alain Hertog and Mark Truchot, lift the veil over the secrets of the alcove family life spouses. They also try to answer the question: how could the 63-year-old Ann Sinclair years marriage to endure the endless betrayals of a spouse whose amorous escapades were the talk of all Paris?
“We, her friends, of course, were aware of the adventures of Dominic, but Ann did not suspect anything,” says philosopher Elizabeth Badinter on the pages of the book. “Today she has reconciled herself, has become submissive, but 25 years ago she was a completely different woman.”
Indeed, a quarter of a century ago, Ann Sinclair was the brightest television journalistic star. When, having quarreled with the management, she left the leading TV channel TF 1, she made sure that she was paid a severance pay of € 1.8 million.
The granddaughter of the wealthiest collector Paul Rosenberg, a friend of Picasso, she fell in love with Strauss-Kahn, a young socialist politician who was predicted to have a brilliant future. Ann and Dominic left their families and tied the knot.
Having received the portfolio of Minister of Finance, Strauss-Kahn played one of the central roles in the government of the Socialists. Subsequently, he agreed to the proposal of his right-wing rival, President Nicolas Sarkozy, to head the IMF. They say that Ann wanted it. The family idyll did not last long. It was in the IMF that a major sex scandal erupted when it became known about Strauss-Kahn's connection with the Hungarian employee Piroska Nagy. Then he managed to get out of the water dry. Ann went into a deep depression.
Today, Madame Sinclair admits that she herself was not a model of virtue. The journalist recalls her “fleeting” romances with the then head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Jacques Attali, with former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius. She hints at her other hobbies, after which there was a cooling in their relationship with Dominic. The former director of the newspaper Le Monde, Jean-Marie Colombani, compares Anne with Diana the huntress, calling her a "fearless seductress."
Endowed with exorbitant ambition, Anne, however, did not want her husband to leave the IMF and embark on the presidential race in France. Apparently, she was afraid of the appearance of compromising evidence. An influential woman who was on friendly terms with the mighty of the world of this, she knew very well: in the struggle for the political Olympus, any means are used.
Ann remains a fighter all his life, biographers note. Getting into a hopeless situation, she followed the advice of her grandmother: “You need to grit your teeth and clench your fists. And, if necessary, use both.” “We are not aware of our capabilities, of what we are able to endure,” Ann said. - We survived the earthquake. We have nothing more to fear." If it were not for Ann, the authors of the biography are sure, it is still unknown how the story with the maid at the Sofitel Hotel in New York would have ended.