For a leftwing French presidential hopeful trying to prove he didn't like bling, room 2806 of the Sofitel hotel near Manhattan's Times Square was luxurious. For $3,000 (£1,850) a night, it boasted a foyer, conference room, living room, bedroom and bathroom. But the size of the suite compounded the brutality of the alleged assault on the hotel maid who described being dragged from room to room in a violent sex attack by one of the most important men in the world economy.

At about 1pm on Saturday afternoon, a 32-year-old chambermaid entered the suite at the luxurious hotel on West 44th Street in the heart of New York's theatre district. She had been instructed to clean and was told it was empty. According to the hotel worker's account to police, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF, emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down a hallway and pulled her into the bedroom where he began to sexually assault her. New York police department spokesman Paul Browne said Strauss-Kahn had been naked when he "grabs her and pulls her into the bedroom and on to the bed".

The 62-year-old then deliberately locked the door to the suite, it was alleged. "She fights him off, and he then drags her down the hallway to the bathroom," Browne continued. There, Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted her again, forcing her to perform oral sex on him and trying to remove her underwear, according to the Associated Press. The woman was able to break free and escape the room, alerting colleagues, who dialled 911 for the police.

When detectives arrived moments later, Strauss-Kahn had already left the hotel, leaving behind his mobile phone and other personal items. "It looked like he got out of there in a hurry," Browne said. The maid, who has not been named, was taken to hospital and treated for "minor injuries".

The New York police quickly tracked Strauss-Kahn to John F Kennedy airport. At 4pm, he was sitting in the first-class cabin of Air France flight AF23 to Paris as it sat on the runway preparing to take off. Ten minutes before the plane was due to depart, two US investigators boarded. "What's this about?" Strauss-Kahn reportedly asked, before agreeing to go with the police. He was not handcuffed and the arrest took place so quietly that other French passengers said they hadn't even noticed Strauss-Kahn, just "some sort of police issue that delayed the flight".

The former French finance minister, who as IMF head earns $420,930 a year tax free, was taken to a police holding cell in Harlem. Reporters from across the world massed outside and, at 3am, a police spokesman confirmed Strauss-Kahn had been charged with a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment.

The French consul general met Strauss-Kahn overnight under the normal rules of protection for French citizens detained abroad, a spokeswoman for the consulate in New York said. Strauss-Kahn was due to appear before a county judge on Sunday afternoon. A lawyer acting for him said he would plead not guilty.

It was not clear what Strauss-Kahn, who has been married three times and has four children, was doing in New York. He is based in Washington and had a meeting on Sunday night in Berlin with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, which was swiftly cancelled after his arrest.

Police investigating whether he deliberately fled the hotel would have to establish whether or not he was scheduled to take the Air France flight to Paris or whether he got on the first available plane. The French media reported Strauss-Kahn had a longstanding agreement with Air France that he could board any flight. French TV said he was due to have lunch with his daughter in Paris on Sunday before heading to see Merkel.

His wife, the former TV presenter and millionaire art heiress Anne Sinclair, was at the couple's €4m (£3.5m) Paris apartment at the time of the alleged attack. After the arrest, she was said to have gone to stay with friends. "I do not believe for a single second the accusations levelled against my husband," she said. "I do not doubt his innocence will be established. I appeal for restraint and decency."

The French political class was braced for more details to emerge of Strauss-Kahn's predatory attitude to women, an open-secret in political circles. President Nicolas Sarkozy told a meeting of MPs last year that, next to DSK, he looked like a "Methodist pastor". The novelist Tristane Banon was expected to detail an alleged attack on her in 2002. Banon's mother, a Socialist , appeared on French national television to claim how he allegedly attacked her daughter.

Strauss-Kahn's allies admit he has a reputation for pursuing women. One Socialist said Strauss-Kahn deliberately did nothing to hide the fact that he was a "libertine". But friends said it was unthinkable that he had gone as far as attempted rape. Michel Taubmann, author of a new authorised biography which tells how Strauss-Kahn married his childhood sweetheart at 18 before going on to marry twice more, said: "He is a well-known seducer but does not have the profile of a rapist."

That part of the alleged attack conjured up uncomfortable parallels with a recent fly-on-the-wall documentary about Strauss-Kahn aimed at softening his haughty image with the French electorate. He had cheerfully been filmed – fully clothed – in his hotel bathroom showing how he hangs up his suits in the shower and leaves the hot tap running for half an hour to steam out the creases.

The allegations spread panic among the left at an extremely awkward time in the runup to the Socialist party's internal battle for a candidate to beat Sarkozy.

Strauss-Kahn, seen as the biggest danger to Sarkozy, had already been accused of being a champagne socialist in what his allies said was a concerted campaign against him. When Socialist MP Pierre Moscovici recently warned against the use of "stink bombs" in the political campaign, many read between the lines that it was a warning about political opponents digging up aspects of Strauss-Kahn's private life and relationships with women.

The far-right politician Marine Le Pen said Strauss-Kahn's arrest meant he could no longer run for president. "All of Paris – journalistic Paris, political Paris – has been abuzz for months about the rather pathological relationship that Mr Strauss-Kahn maintains towards women," she said. One rightwing MP from Sarkozy's ruling party compared Strauss-Kahn to JR in the soap opera Dallas.

The full implications of the shame raised by the allegations was apparent in New York's Daily News's headline: "Le Perv".