Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum arrested at his home this morning

Montreal's new mayor, who pledged to stamp out corruption at City Hall when he took office late last year, was arrested by Quebec's anti-corruption police squad Monday, numerous Canadian media outlets said.

Montreal Mayor Faces Bribery Charges
By IAN AUSTEN, The New York Times
Published: June 17, 2013

OTTAWA — The mayor of Montreal was arrested at his home early Monday by a special anticorruption police squad, at the same time that a 20-month-old public commission has uncovered widespread corruption in Montreal’s construction industry linking politicians and organized crime.

The police said the mayor, Michael Applebaum, was facing 14 charges related to bribery involving hundreds of thousands of dollars. They declined to provide further details, saying that the investigation was continuing and that more arrests were likely.

Television networks showed Mr. Applebaum arriving in an unmarked police car at the Montreal headquarters of the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force.

A spokeswoman confirmed the detention of two of Mr. Applebaum’s former associates. One, Saulie Zajdel, was an unsuccessful Conservative candidate for Parliament who was given a created job that had no obvious defined responsibilities. He stepped down after a storm of controversy over his actions as an unelected but de facto member of Parliament.

Mr. Applebaum became the mayor of Montreal, the country’s second-largest city, in November, after his predecessor, Gérald Tremblay, resigned as the corruption inquiry began implicating his closest associates. Mr. Applebaum is the first English speaker to hold the post in 100 years.

On Monday, the police said Mr. Applebaum’s arrest related to two real estate deals between 2006 and 2011 in the largely English-speaking Montreal borough of Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dâme-de-Grace, a period during which he served as that borough’s mayor. The anticorruption police squad raided the borough’s offices in February.

"stratos" said
Michael Applebaum, the French-speaking city's first anglophone mayor in more than a century, was arrested at his home early Monday morning...