Sarkozy on Strauss-Kahn: 'We Warned Him'

CBS News reports:

While the International Monetary Fund's chief waits in New York's Rikers Island jail for his next court date on charges that he tried to rape a maid in a posh Manhattan hotel, news reports have detailed numerous other allegations of impropriety toward women on the part of the Frenchman.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's reputation in France for aggressively pursuing women was apparently so bad that French President Nicolas Sarkozy personally warned the former finance minister to control himself in Washington before he left France in 2007 to head the IMF, the British newspaper The Times reported ($) Wednesday.

"Over there they don't joke about this sort of thing," The Times quoted Sarkozy saying to Strauss-Kahn then. "Your life will be passed under a magnifying glass. Avoid taking the lift alone with interns. France cannot permit a scandal."

After news broke Saturday that the New York Police Department arrested Strauss-Kahn at John F. Kennedy International Airport on suspicion of attempted rape, Sarkozy aides told The Times that the French president rolled his eyes.

"We did warn him," Sarkozy said, according to his aides.