In his first known comments since being arrested for an alleged attack on a maid,Dominique Strauss-Kahn defiantly denied the charges and said his name will be cleared.

“I deny in the strongest possible terms the allegations which I now face,” the former-IMF chief said in a farewell e-mail to his staff. “I am confident that the truth will come out and I will be exonerated.”

The e-mail – obtained by CNN – was forwarded to the entire staff of theInternational Monetary Fund Sunday evening by its acting head John Lipsky.

Strauss-Kahn said the decision to step down from the global economic policy group was made with “profound sadness” and frustration, but he was anxious to spare the institution.

“I cannot accept that the fund – and you dear colleagues – should in any way have to share my own personal nightmare. So I had to go,” he wrote.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, was arrested May 14 on charges he tried to rape a chambermaid at a Big Apple hotel.

He resigned from the IMF last week while still in jail. He was placed under house arrest by a judge on Friday and is confined to a lower Manhattan apartment.

Strauss-Kahn – who was a top contender to be France‘s next president – had run the IMF since 2007.

“What the institution has achieved in the last three and a half years is the fruit of your thinking, your work, your conviction,” he said. “Thank you, good luck for the future and au revoir.”

Strauss-Kahn’s long-suffering heiress wife, Anne Sinclair, put down $1 million to bail her husband out and will have to pony up at least $200,000-a-month to cover security costs his court-ordered home confinement.