‘Dodo the Pimp’, made infamous by DSK sex scandal, dies age 77

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AFP)—A brothel owner nicknamed "Dodo the Pimp", who stood trial in a high-profile prostitution case alongside disgraced French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has died aged 77, his former lawyer said Tuesday. A French national who ran multiple brothels in Belgium, where he was convicted as a pimp, Dominique Alderweireld was thrust into the media spotlight for his alleged links to Strauss-Kahn. Alderweireld was accused of procuring prostitutes for sex parties involving prominent figures at the upmarket Carlton hotel in Lille, in northern France.

Both men were ultimately acquitted in the 2015 case. Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund at the time, saw his career implode when he was accused of sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid in 2011 -- dashing his hopes of becoming president of France. The Carlton case was the last in a series of sex and corruption scandals that landed him in the dock, only to fizzle out.

Alderweireld maintained throughout the trial that the women working in his "hostess bars" in Belgium were freelancers and that he did not make any money from their participation in sex parties with Strauss-Kahn. Born in Annoeullin in northern France, Alderweireld wrote a book recounting a "difficult childhood" growing up in various down-and-out towns in northern France. Around the turn of the 2000s, he entered the hostess bar business in Belgium -- coming to view his home region around Lille as "a reservoir of one million people who only have to cross the border to let off steam".

He always maintained he never met Strauss-Kahn -- but did not shy away from the publicity the connection brought, even naming one of his clubs "DSK" -- he maintained the initials stood for either "Dodo Sex Klub" or "Dodo Saumure Klub". Alderweireld spent his final years in poverty, declaring on social media in June that he was homeless. Suffering from heart failure, he died overnight Monday to Tuesday in the Belgian city of Tournai, according to his former lawyer Sorin Margulis.