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The New York Post reported this morning that friends of Dominique Strauss-Kahn have offered more than a million dollars of hush money to the impoverished family of the maid accusing him of rape. But according to a Reuters report, the family may not be the bribing type. The news wire tracked down the maid's family in a village in the Labe region of Guinea in West Africa and found them deeply skeptical of worldly wealth.
"In our family, we are above material things," said Mamoudou, a 50-year-old man who says he is the brother of DSK's accuser. (Reuters said it withheld his family name or the name of his home village "to protect the identity of the alleged assault victim.") He adds, "Even if you are a billionaire, we don't care. The most important thing for us is how you follow God's path."
The report in the Post cited a French businesswoman with "close ties" to DSK who said "they already talked with her family" and offered the money. She predicted that DSK would get off charges and "fly back to France." The Post suggested that the family's poverty would make them more likely to take the hush money offering. And the Reuters report largely confirms their meager living conditions: there's no electricity or water mains in their village and the per capita average annual income in the area is just over a dollar a day. Reportedly, the family can't even afford shoes.