Within the same day that its managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn filed his resignation from the International Monetary Fund, the institution came out with its own official list of code of conduct for its officers and employees to follow.

AFP reported that the new ethics rules set guidelines on workplace relationships and sexual harassment, and were approved on May 6 but publicized Thursday for unclear reasons.

IMF spokesman William Murray said Thursday that the new policies on personal relationships "are strong and consistent with best practice, including in the United States."

"A close personal relationship between a supervisor and subordinate presents a potential conflict of interest and must be reported and resolved, usually by reassignment of one of the individuals to a different work unit," he said in a statement.

The multilateral institution did not elaborate why it needed to come up with such at the very time that its former managing director Mr Strauss-Kahn was indicted for alleged sexual assault charges in New York.

Mr Kahn, though released on bail of $1 million, will be under house arrest as the court proceedings move on its next phase.

Precedence

Reports said that the IMF may have faced a similar situation in 2008 while Mr Strauss-Kahn was at the helm and was involved in an office relationship with a with a Hungarian economist who worked in the IMF's Africa department.

The IMF board called the relationship a "serious error of judgment" but did not find him guilty of harassment or abuse of power.