Maybe women like Anne Sinclair are trying to protect themselves, their children, and their families more than their husbands.

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Dominique Strauss-Kahn, disgraced former IMF boss, is married to Anne Sinclair, a former TV presenter who is editor of the French Huffington Post.

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The other similarities involve the wives, Anne Sinclair and Maria Shriver, both of whom are wealthy, famous women in their own right and scions of influential families.

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Earlier this week, French journalist Anne Sinclair, wife of troubled former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, made a withering attack on Mr Sarkozy and his wife, former super model Carla Bruni.

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The sources also said half would have been paid by Mr Strauss-Kahn and half would have been loaned to him by his wife Anne Sinclair, from whom he formally separated last month.

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Moreover, the polyglot Mr Strauss-Kahn, fluent in German, English and Spanish, and with a (third) wife, Anne Sinclair, who until 1997 had her own political chat-show on television, was the perfect man to smooth-talk journalists and placate suspicious foreigners.

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