A lawyer acting on behalf of the New York hotel maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of attempted rape, was to file a lawsuit in France Tuesday accusing a French official of trying to interfere with a potential witness, reports said.
France Info radio reported that Nafissatou Diallo would accuse an official in Strauss-Kahn's political stronghold of Sarcelles of pressuring a woman who claimed to have had an affair not to testify against him, DPA reported.
A lawyer acting on Diallo's behalf would file the lawsuit against the unnamed official, the report said. Diallo acccuses the official of approaching friends of the woman to offer money in return for her silence.
The move comes hours before New York prosecutors were expected to ask a Manhattan court for permission to drop the charges against Strauss-Kahn.
In a 25-page motion for the dismissal of the charges, posted on the New York Times website Monday, the prosecutors say that while there was evidence of a "hurried sexual encounter," they did not feel they could prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that it was a forced encounter.
The case would could hinge of the testimony of the alleged victim - but her credibility as a witness had been "seriously undermined" by inconsistencies in her account of events surrounding the incident, and the fact that she had lied about elements of her past, the prosecutors argued.
The prosecution's decision, which they relayed to Diallo in person Monday, met with widespread satisfaction among French supporters of the former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief.
Strauss-Kahn's lawyers had acknowledged there was a sexual encounter between their client and the maid, but denied it was forced. Diallo on August 8 also filed a civil lawsuit against him.
After the criminal charges are dropped Strauss-Kahn is expected to return to France, where he could also face an investigation for attempted rape in a separate case.
The police are investigating claims by French writer Tristane Banon that Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her during an interview in 2003.
Strauss-Kahn has rejected the allegations as "imaginary."