The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) yes­ter­day an­nounced it has ap­point­ed Do­minique Strauss-Kahn's deputy to man­age the in­sti­tu­tion af­ter he was charged with the at­tempt­ed rape of a ho­tel cham­ber maid in New York.John Lip­sky will be­come act­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor in his ab­sence, han­dling the fi­nan­cial cri­sis hit­ting sev­er­al coun­tries.Lip­sky, the IMF's first deputy man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, is a for­mer US Trea­sury ex­ec­u­tive and one­time banker at JP Mor­gan. William Mur­ray, an IMF spokesman, said that Lip­sky, who has been over­see­ing the lo­gis­tics of the bailout of the Greek econ­o­my, would meet with mem­bers of the IMF board in Wash­ing­ton lat­er in the day, ac­cord­ing to Reuters."In line with stan­dard IMF. pro­ce­dures, John Lip­sky, first deputy man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, is act­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor while the MD is not in DC," Mr Mur­ray said in a state­ment. "Mr Lip­sky will chair the in­for­mal Board ses­sion to­day."

Mr Strauss-Kahn, 62, was due to be await­ing ar­raigned yes­ter­day in Man­hat­tan. The New York Po­lice De­part­ment for­mal­l­ly ar­rest­ed him at 2:15 yes­ter­day morn­ing "on charges of crim­i­nal sex­u­al act, at­tempt­ed rape, and an un­law­ful im­pris­on­ment in con­nec­tion with a sex­u­al as­sault on a 32-year-old cham­ber­maid in the lux­u­ry suite of a Mid­town Man­hat­tan ho­tel yes­ter­day" about 1 pm, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Paul J Browne, the de­part­ment's chief spokesman, said.Browne said that it was about 1 pm on Sat­ur­day when the maid, a 32-year-old woman, en­tered Strauss-Kahn's suite-Room 2806-be­liev­ing it was un­oc­cu­pied. Browne said that the suite, which cost US$3,000 a night, had a foy­er, a con­fer­ence room, a liv­ing room and a bed­room, and that Strauss-Khan had checked in on Fri­day.

As she was in the foy­er, "he came out of the bath­room, ful­ly naked, and at­tempt­ed to sex­u­al­ly as­sault her. He grabs her, ac­cord­ing to her ac­count, and pulls her in­to the bed­room and on­to the bed," Browne said, adding that Strauss-Khan al­leged­ly locked the door to the suite."She fights him off, and he then drags her down the hall­way to the bath­room, where he sex­u­al­ly as­saults her a sec­ond time," Browne said.At some point dur­ing the as­sault, the woman broke free, Mr Browne said, and "she fled, re­port­ed it to oth­er ho­tel per­son­nel, who called 911." He added, "When the po­lice ar­rived, he was not there."