MONTREAL: The mayor of Montreal resigned on Tuesday following his arrest on corruption charges, vowing to clear his name and insisting he was innocent of wrongdoing.
Michael Applebaum, the first English-speaking mayor of Canada’s second-largest city in more than 100 years, said he was stepping down one day after he was arrested and charged with fraud, collusion, breach of trust and corruption.
“I maintain my innocence,” Applebaum told a press conference. “I want to be clear, I have never taken a penny from anyone.”
Applebaum said he was resigning in order to focus on clearing his name.
“Being mayor of Montreal is not a task that one can do while defending themselves against accusations of this nature and I hope that you’ll understand that I’ll put my energies into my defense and into my family,” he said.
Frenzy followed his announcement as councilors jockeyed to succeed Applebaum as interim mayor until the next municipal election in November.
The city council’s executive committee is expected to make that decision within the next 30 days.
But pundits voiced amazement that anyone would want the tarnished job, given the seemingly insurmountable task of reestablishing voters’ trust in politicians in a Canadian province gripped for more than a year by scandals.
Applebaum, a former real estate agent, replaced Gerald Tremblay after he resigned in November over a scheme in which his party allegedly received kickbacks from government construction bids.
Nearby Laval’s longtime mayor also quit after he was arrested in a police sweep last month for alleged fraud and gangsterism. — AFP