By Dave Goldiner
DNAinfo News Editor
LOWER MANHATTAN - Disgraced ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was settling into his new digs at 71 Broadway Saturday after being rejected by an Upper East Side high-rise.
The accused sex fiend, who was freed on $6 million bail and is under house arrest, will have to stay 24 hours a day in his freshly-rented apartment at the 21-story tower known as the Empire Building.
Strauss-Kahn turned up at the downtown building, near Rector Street, under guard Friday night after being sprung from Rikers Island, where he was held since his arrest on attempted rape charges May 21.
Under the terms of his bail, the high-flying banker had to surrender his passport and can't leave the posh digs, where flats start at $4,250 a month, a relatively reasonable price for the jet-setter.
Strauss-Kahn's wife, Anne Sinclair, had booked a pad earlier in the week at the Bristol Plaza on the Upper East Side.
But management at the Bristol nixed the deal after being besieged by reporters from New York, France and beyond.
The rejection forced Strauss-Kahn to cool his heels at Rikers longer while his people scrambled to find a place for him to stay.
The onetime French presidential frontrunner will also have to pay a private security company to stand guard over him until he returns to court to face the sex charges. He will foot the estimated $200,000-a-month tab for the round-the-clock guards.
Strauss-Kahn's new neighbors were less than overjoyed to share the same address with him.
"The man is evil," Joanie Adler, 33, groused to The Post. "I don't like the idea of him staying here."
'He belongs in jail, not in my building," lawyer Alex Holland, told the paper.
After being dumped by the Bristol Plaza, Strauss-Kahn was rumored to be eying a string of apartments in lower Manhattan. It was unclear whether other buildings also rejected him before the deal was sealed at 71 Broadway.
Strauss-Kahn, who has long been dogged by allegations of sexual hijinx, is accused of trying to force a maid at the Sofitel Hotel in Midtown to perform sex acts on him.
The millionaire banker was apparently looking for some attention even earlier. The Daily Beast reported that Strauss-Kahn called the front-desk receptionist at the hotel moments after checking in on May 13.
He asked the woman if she wanted to come to his rooom for a drink, but she refused, the web site reported.
The next day, the maid, an immigrant from West Africa, told cops she was cleaning Strausss-Kahn's room when the randy money man emerged naked from the bathroom. He allegedly groped her and tried to force her into oral sex, cops charged.
Strauss-Kahn hurriedly left the hotel and headed for John F. Kennedy International Airport for a flight to Paris. He was sitting in the first class section when NYPD cops investigating the attack pulled him off the plane.
He faces up to 25 years in prison on a string of charges including criminal sexual acts and attempted rape.
The arrest sparked a firestorm of international publicity, with French media expressing outrage that Strauss-Kahn was shown being walked out of a police station in handcuffs. French media are forbidden from showing images of suspects in handcuffs or shackles because they are deemed to imply that they are guilty.
