Mrs Strauss-Kahn finally walks out (what could he have done this time?)

After months of loyal support in the face of vice allegations, the wife of the former IMF boss has had enough

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former director of the IMF, was supported by his his wife, Anne Sinclair, when he faced charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York last year. The charges were dismissed by a Supreme Court judge in New York City (EPA)

The most sorely-provoked wife of modern times has finally called it quits.

Anne Sinclair, the heiress and former television news anchor who stood by her husband Dominique Strauss-Kahn throughout his public disgrace in New York, has left him, the French weekly Closer reported in its online edition yesterday. The disgraced former head of the International Monetary Fund has reportedly been expelled from the couple's home in Paris's Place des Vosges.

DSK, as he is known in France, is said to have moved in with a friend in Paris. "He's in a bad way," another friend said. "It's very sad. He's mostly just at home on his own." Another described him as "depressed and destroyed." The banker-turned-politician was last seen in public, unshaven and haggard, voting in the French elections.

Mr Strauss-Kahn, now 63, persuaded Anne Sinclair, now 64, to marry him in 1991 after she interviewed him for her television show 7sur7, one of France's most popular and prominent news programmes.

According to Closer, Ms Sinclair threw out her wayward husband of almost 21 years one month ago. In an interview in French Elle magazine in January, she denied that feminists and others had the right to judge her decision to stand by a man who many had decided was morally degenerate and promiscuous. But she also denied that her support for her husband was unconditional. "Unconditional support does not exist," she insisted. "One supports [a partner] if one has decided to support [him]. Nobody knows what happens in the intimacy of a couple."

After a sexual encounter in his hotel room in New York with a chamber maid called Nafissatou Diallo in May last year, Diallo claimed he had forced her to have sex with him. The IMF grandee was hauled from the plane that was about to fly him back to Europe and forced to do a humiliating "perp walk" in front of the media. Anne Sinclair flew to New York and ostentatiously supported her husband throughout the ordeal. Prosecutors later aborted the case, but by then the damage was done. Back in France, Mr Strauss-Kahn was accused of involvement in setting up a ring of prostitutes to take part in sex orgies in the northern city of Lille, and it seems that by then his wife's support had begun to waver.

When in January she was appointed editor of the Huffington Post's new French edition, she appeared at a press conference without her wedding ring. It was perhaps the first sign that she had decided enough was enough.

DSK Undone: Sexual allegations

2002 Accused by Tristane Banon, the god-daughter of Strauss-Kahn's second wife, Brigitte Guillemette, of trying to rape her in a Paris apartment. He denied the accusation.

2008 A brief, consensual affair with Hungarian-born Piroska Nagy, a former economist with the IMF.

2010-11 Charged with "aggravated pimping" by French prosecutors after allegedly attending sex parties attended by prostitutes.

2011 Indicted on charges relating to an alleged assault on New York hotel housekeeper Nafissatou Diallo. The charges were later dropped, but Mr Strauss-Kahn admitted that a sex act had taken place.