DSK scandal figure ‘Dodo the Pimp’ dies at 77

Dominique Alderweireld, the French brothel owner nicknamed “Dodo the Pimp” after a prostitution case involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has died aged 77, his former lawyer Sorin Margulis said Tuesday.

Margulis said Alderweireld died overnight Monday to Tuesday in the Belgian city of Tournai. Alderweireld had suffered from heart failure.

Alderweireld, a French national who ran brothels in Belgium, was convicted there as a pimp. He was accused in France of procuring prostitutes for sex parties involving prominent figures at the Carlton hotel in Lille.

Alderweireld and Strauss-Kahn were both acquitted in the 2015 Carlton case. Alderweireld maintained during the trial that women working in his Belgian hostess bars were freelancers and that he did not make money from their participation in sex parties with Strauss-Kahn. He also said he never met Strauss-Kahn.

Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund, saw his political career collapse after he was accused of sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid in 2011. The Carlton case was the last in a series of sex and corruption scandals that brought him to court but ended without conviction.

Alderweireld spent his final years in poverty and said on social media in June that he was homeless.