Strauss-Kahn Emails IMF Staff

CNN reports:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned last week as head of the International Monetary Fund in the face of sexual assault charges, told the fund's staff of his "profound sadness and frustration in having to leave under these circumstances" in an e-mail obtained by CNN.

"I deny in the strongest possible terms the allegations which I now face," Strauss-Kahn wrote to his former employees.

IMF acting head John Lipsky forwarded the e-mail to the fund's staff Sunday evening. It was then obtained exclusively by CNN's Nina dos Santos.

The Frenchman said he is confident that he will be exonerated of charges of attacking a hotel maid in New York, but he could not "accept that the Fund -- and you dear colleagues -- should in any way have to share my own personal nightmare. So, I had to go."

He praises his former colleagues effusively in the e-mail, saying, "What the institution has achieved in the last three and a half years is the fruit of your thinking, your work, your conviction," and signs off, "Thank you, good luck for the future, and au revoir. Dominique."

The fund is scheduled to begin accepting nominations for his replacement Monday, with a battle shaping up between Europe and the developing world.

Every managing director of the fund has been European since the institution was created in 1946. Four have been French.

The United Kingdom said over the weekend it would back French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde for the position.