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Politicians claim case is ‘hurting institution’, as New York chambermaid’s brother tells of her floods of tears Pressure is building on Dominique Strauss-Kahn to resign as head of the International Monetary Fund, with the US treasury chief and European finance ministers questioning if he can carry on in the light of his arrest. In a speech in New York on Tuesday, Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, said Strauss-Khan was “obviously not in a position to run the IMF”. He said: “I think it’s important that the board of the IMF formally put in place for an interim period somebody to act as managing director.” Geithner’s comments came after Austria’s finance minister, Maria Fekter, and others, said Strauss-Kahn was damaging the IMF: “Considering the situation, that bail was denied, he has to figure out for himself, that he is hurting the institution,” she told journalists at a meeting of European finance ministers in Brussels. Strauss-Kahn is being held in isolation at the notorious Rikers Island in New York, having been refused bail after denying charges of a sexual assault on a 32-year-old chambermaid. His lawyers are expected to reapply for bail on Friday; one New York tabloid reported they might be preparing to argue sexual contact was consensual. A grand jury is meeting in private to decide whether evidence is strong enough for a case to proceed over the alleged attack in a luxury Manhattan hotel suite. Jurors will announce their decision on Friday. Fekter’s Spanish counterpart, Elana Salgado, also put pressure on the IMF boss. She said the alleged crimes were “extraordinarily serious” and Strauss-Kahn needed to decide for himself if he should step down. “If I had to show my solidarity and support for someone, it would be toward the woman who has been assaulted, if that is really the case that she has been,” she said. IMF officials are also reportedly keen for Strauss-Khan to step down. Officials at the institution said they could not comment and said they had not spoken to Strauss-Kahn since his arrest. Other European officials were more supportive. “I’m very sad and upset. And he’s a good friend of mine,” the Luxembourg prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, said. “I didn’t like the pictures I’ve seen on television,” he added of footage showing Strauss-Kahn in handcuffs escorted by police. Strauss-Kahn, who had been tipped to win the French presidency as the Socialist candidate next year, is accused of sexually assaulting and attempting to rape a maid at the Sofitel hotel last Saturday. He was detained by police hours later as he sat in the first class cabin of an Air France flight about to take off for Paris. He had been due to host meetings about Europe’s debt crisis. The New York Post reported that his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, might be preparing to argue sexual contact was consensual. It quoted a source close to the defence: “There may well have been consent.” Brafman told the court on Monday that forensic evidence taken by police from his client over the weekend “will not be consistent with a forcible encounter”. The brother of the alleged victim, who has not been named, told the Daily Mail his sister called him an hour after the incident and said: “Somebody has done something really bad to me.” She was crying uncontrollably, he said, claiming she told him Strauss-Kahn twice tried to force himself on her. Lawyer Jeffrey Shapiro, representing the maid, said she was from Guinea in west Africa and has a 15-year-old daughter; he said she had no agenda, had no idea who Strauss-Kahn was, felt “alone in the world” and was now in hiding. The allegations have shocked France. In a CSA poll, 57% of voters and 70% of Socialists said they thought Strauss-Kahn was the victim of a plot. The philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy said Strauss-Kahn had been his friend for 20 years and would remain so: “Charming, seductive, yes, certainly; a friend to women and, first of all, to his own woman, naturally; but this brutal and violent individual, this wild animal, this primate? Obviously no, it’s absurd.” Le Monde reported that Strauss-Kahn’s wife, Anne Sinclair, had got a call from her husband as he was travelling to the airport. He mentioned a “serious problem” but made no allusion to a hotel attack. Strauss-Kahn’s former wife, Brigitte Guillemette, defended him in an interview with Le Parisien. He is believed to have to met their daughter Camille after the alleged attack. Guillemette said it was “unthinkable” he could do what he was accused of and then lunch with his daughter minutes later. “He’s someone who is gentle. Violence is not part of his temperament,” she said. French writer Tristane Banon is considering filing a police complaint for attempted rape against Strauss-Kahn over an alleged attack in 2002. New York mayor Mike Bloomberg defended the police decision to parade the handcuffed IMF boss before the media in a so-called “perp walk”, a move that has caused outrage in France, where former French culture minister Jack Lang described it as a “lynching”. Bloomberg told reporters: “I think it is humiliating, but if you don’t want to do the perp walk, don’t do the crime. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for that. Our judicial system works where the public can see the alleged perpetrators.” The case has rocked the financial world as the IMF grapples with the European debt crisis; it led the bailouts of Greece, Portugal and Ireland, and Strauss-Kahn has been one of the bailout packages’ greatest supporters. After his arrest, the IMF’s second-in-command, John Lipsky, was named acting managing director. Among those being mentioned as possible successors are Gordon Brown, French finance minister Christine Lagarde, Kemal Dervis, a Turkish former finance minister now at the US Brookings Institution, and Mohammad El-Erian, an Egyptian award-winning author who heads the Pimco bond fund. China’s top official at the IMF, Zhu Min, is also a potential deputy managing director. France’s Socialist party met for emergency talks about its forthcoming primary race for a candidate to run against Nicolas Sarkozy next year, with Strauss-Kahn out of the picture. “There was emotion, of course, and the shock we all feel, but it is our responsibility to be up to the task,” said party leader Martine Aubry. Dominique Strauss-Kahn IMF Economics Global economy United States France Europe Dominic Rushe Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk