Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Khan has repeated claims that political opponents planned the fallout from a sex scandal to prevent him running for the French presidency.
He has told the Guardian newspaper that people linked to the party of President Nicolas Sarkozy also bugged his phone.
Mr Strauss-Kahn did not claim his sexual encounter with a New York hotel maid in May last year was the result of a set-up.
But he suggested the subsequent handling of events was orchestrated to ensure he was publicly shamed.
Perhaps I was politically naive, but I simply did not believe that they would go that far - I didn't think they could find anything that could stop me, Mr Strauss-Kahn said.
Following his arrest in New York, Mr Strauss-Kahn was held in prison and then forced to live under house arrest. He quit his post as IMF managing director and did not put himself forward as a Socialist candidate for the election.
New York prosecutors dropped criminal charges against him in August, saying that the maid's story was undermined by lies and inconsistencies.
