A note to international financiers staying in New York’s swanky hotels: Regardless of what you may be used to, sexually assaulting the housekeeping staff is out of bounds.
Egyptian businessman Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar was arrested on Monday for groping a hotel maid at the Pierre hotel across from Central Park. He is being held at the 19th Precinct station on charges of sexual abuse, unlawful imprisonment, forcible touching, and harassment. After calling for room service to request tissues in his $900-a-night room, he “locked her in the room and had her trapped,” a police source told the Daily News. “He grabbed her breasts, groped her. He was grinding against her.”
The Post reports that the alleged victim “ran directly to a manager to report the alleged attack,” which took place on Sunday night. “But the manager told her she had to tell her own supervisor, who wasn’t working at the time.” The police were notified on Monday morning, and Omar, a former chairman of the Bank of Alexandria and the Egyptian American Bank, was arrested at the hotel on Monday afternoon. He currently serves as chairman of a salt company, El-Mex Salines Co.
Meanwhile, former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was arrested in a similar incident at the Sofitel two weeks ago, has hired an all-male cleaning crew at the rented Tribeca townhouse where he is awaiting trial. The Post noted: “Well, that’s one way to keep Pepe Le Pew’s paws off the help!”
Egyptian exec charged with groping hotel maid two weeks after Strauss-Kahn bust [NYDN]
2nd banker in hotel sex bust [NYP]
DSK using man-power to clean up [NYP]
