Dominique Strauss-Kahn, his hopes for the French Presidency scuppered by a sensational New York sex scandal, returned to Paris yesterday to a media frenzy and an uneasy welcome from his Socialist allies.

The former IMF chief and his journalist wife Anne Sinclair arrived at dawn at Charles de Gaulle airport on an Air France flight and were whisked off in a black Peugeot to their apartment in the chic Place des Vosges.

They smiled and waved but said nothing to the horde of journalists and handful of supporters awaiting their arrival at the airport and again declined to comment when mobbed by media as they reached their home in the Marais area of Paris. Mr Strauss-Kahn has promised to talk about what he has called his “terrible and unjust ordeal” but an aide told journalists massed outside his house that he would not make any statement yesterday. Mr Strauss-Kahn, dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, boarded a flight at New York’s JFK airport late on Saturday, less than two weeks after sexual assault charges against him were dropped.

Three and a half months ago police hauled the Socialist politician off a plane that was about to leave for Paris from the same airport and charged him with the sexual assault and attempted rape of the hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo.

The 62-year-old spent nearly a week in jail and was then put under house arrest for six weeks and barred from leaving the US. He was also forced to resign as the International Monetary Fund’s managing director.

But late last month he walked free when a judge dismissed the charges against him after prosecutors said they could not pursue the case because his accuser’s lack of credibility. Prosecutors said she had been caught lying on her asylum application form, including about a gang rape she had suffered in her native Guinea.