Strauss-Kahn and his wife Anne Sinclair For months, Anne Sinclair, a multimillionaire former top TV presenter, stoically stuck by her husband of 20 years despite a string of vice allegations. But according to the weekly magazine, Closer, she has now thrown Mr Strauss-Kahn out of their home in the ultra-chic Place des Vosges in central Paris.
A source close to Mr Strauss-Kahn, 63, said the pair had been living in separate apartments for about a month.
But Miss Sinclair, 64, an art heiress who recently relaunched her media career as a news editor at the Huffington Post’s French edition, managed to keep the split quiet despite growing speculation their marriage was over.
He is said to have moved in with a friend.
News of the separation followed weeks of media speculation that the relationship was under pressure and reports that Mr Strauss-Kahn was depressed at his spectacular fall from grace.
\"He’s in a bad way. It’s very sad,” said a person who knows Mr Strauss-Kahn and recently saw him said. “He’s mostly just at home on his own while Anne is out and about with her new job. He’s shunned by everybody.”
Another friend described him as “depressed and destroyed\".
Miss Sinclair last week agreed to a photo shoot alone for the front page of Paris Match magazine - a sign she was preparing the ground for news of the separation, observers said.
Once hotly tipped to be France’s next Socialist President, Mr Strauss-Kahn has seen his career disintegrate since his arrest in New York in May 2011 on charges of attempting to rape a hotel maid. The criminal case was dropped over concerns about the credibility of Nafissatou Diallo, 33, but he admitted that a sex act had taken place. The maid is now pursuing a civil case against him after the Bronx Supreme Court threw out his claims of diplomatic immunity.
Miss Sinclair stood steadfastly by her husband during the US ordeal, but is said to have been less supportive amid mounting allegations in France.
These included claims by a French writer that he had tried to rape her in a Paris flat. Prosecutors ruled that there was sufficient evidence to press sexual harassment charges but could not pursue the case as the events took place more than three years previously.
Then prosecutors opened an investigation into a prostitution ring operating out of Lille, northern France in which Mr Strauss-Kahn is implicated.
He faces “aggravated pimping” charges as prosecutors seek to determine the nature of his relationship with prostitutes when he attended sex parties in northern France, Paris and Washington in 2010 and 2011. The charges carry a maximum 20-year prison term.
Last month the inquiry was widened to include a possible gang rape charge after a prostitute told them Mr Strauss-Kahn and friends had forced her to have sex in a group when she came to Washington to meet him in December 2010. The woman has not filed a formal complaint.
Another call girl told investigators that Mr Strauss-Kahn and his male friends treated orgies “like cattle markets”, and he referred to women as “equipment” in one message to a friend.
He denies any knowledge that the women at the orgies were prostitutes — his lawyer has argued that “they were all naked at the time” - and he has told police there was “no brutality” involved.
Also under investigation are: Jean-Christophe Lagarde, a former police chief from Lille ; David Roquet, head of a subsidiary of the Eiffage building giant ; and another businessman called Fabrice Paszkowski , who is said to have regularly exchanged mobile phone text messages with Mr Strauss-Kahn.