1. Michael Mark Applebaum was born on February 10,1963 and is a former Canadian politician who served as interim mayor of Montreal between his appointment by the city council on November 16,2012, and his resignation on June 18,2013.
60 Facts About Michael Applebaum
1. 2.
On June 6,2017, Michael Applebaum was granted parole two months after serving one-sixth of his sentence when he admitted to his crimes.
3.
Michael Applebaum was first elected city councillor for Notre-Dame-de-Grace on November 6,1994, as a member of the now defunct Parti des Montrealais.
4.
Michael Applebaum was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Montreal on February 10,1963, the third child of Ray and Moishe Michael Applebaum.
5.
Michael Applebaum was raised in Saint-Laurent and went to Winston Churchill High School, where he was a quiet student.
6.
Michael Applebaum spent Grade 7 in a French immersion program at the English-language school but never mastered the language.
7.
Michael Applebaum always wanted to become a very wealthy businessman and never expected to go into politics.
8.
Michael Applebaum studied commerce at Dawson College CEGEP, dropping out because he lost patience with a business teacher who regularly arrived late for class.
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Michael Applebaum opened his first clothing boutique at 18 while at Dawson.
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Michael Applebaum later opened a number of other businesses and took over the family shoe store.
11.
Michael Applebaum was involved in the Jewish community and was supportive of Israel.
12.
Michael Applebaum always professed traditional Jewish values of family, working hard, and volunteering.
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In 1994, Michael Applebaum became known locally as "the rink activist" for campaigning to save a popular local outdoor hockey rink from closure at MacDonald Park in his Snowdon neighbourhood.
14.
Michael Applebaum negotiated a compromise solution that had the city maintain the installation while local volunteers maintained the ice.
15.
Michael Applebaum maintained a brisk, focused business, selling 48 properties in his first year alone.
16.
Michael Applebaum once tracked down a blue-collar worker who spent a day hiding in a luncheonette while collecting $21 an hour.
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In 2001, Michael Applebaum joined other city councillors in forming the Union Montreal party under mayoral candidate Gerald Tremblay, a businessman and former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister.
18.
Michael Applebaum chaired of the borough's zoning committee or CCU.
19.
Michael Applebaum once threatened to sue a citizen who pointed out that he should give up his real estate job if he wanted to sit on the CCU.
20.
Michael Applebaum only gave up his realtor job and CCU position upon being appointed as a full member of the Montreal Executive Committee in 2009.
21.
Michael Applebaum repeatedly rejected proposals from councillor Warren Allmand to open CCU meetings to the public and to provide documentation on CCU zoning recommendations to the public before being adopted by the borough council.
22.
Michael Applebaum found himself at odds with community groups over a number of public works projects in Benny Park in the underserved Loyola district of the borough.
23.
Michael Applebaum explained delays by the city's careful review of technical documents to ensure that bids for the project do not come in higher than expected.
24.
Michael Applebaum alienated community groups looking to revitalize the Empress Theatre, a heritage site owned by the borough and sitting unused since a 1992 fire.
25.
Ownership reverted to the borough and the Michael Applebaum administration set up a competitive bid process in 2012 that pitted community groups against each other.
26.
Michael Applebaum rejected any criticism as always coming from the same "five or six or seven people" that ran against him in elections.
27.
In 2013, fellow Union Montreal councillor Warren Allmand said that he encouraged Michael Applebaum to react more constructively to citizen suggestions, and was critical of Michael Applebaum's perceiving differences of opinion as attempts to dislodge him from power.
28.
Michael Applebaum's crimes were part of a nexus of corruption involving bid-rigging for municipal contracts by large construction firms in Montreal-area cities in exchange for bribes and kickbacks.
29.
Michael Applebaum was part of a straw-man financing scheme for municipal and provincial political parties, reimbursing company employees for political donations to circumvent Quebec campaign financing law banning companies from contributing to political parties.
30.
Michael Applebaum instructed his aide to never discuss the cash exchanges, to accept illegal payments in a car or anonymous locations, to leave packages or envelopes in the car for a while until opening them, and to turn off any cellphones when making cash transactions.
31.
Between 2002 and 2009, Michael Applebaum rose through the ranks of Mayor Gerald Tremblay's government, being handed increasing responsibilities.
32.
Michael Applebaum became the second most powerful person in Montreal on April 6,2011, when he was promoted by Tremblay to chair of the executive committee and given control over the city's finances.
33.
Michael Applebaum replaced Claude Dauphin who resigned over allegations of spying on top bureaucrats as Tremblay's government faced increased scrutiny for corruption.
34.
Michael Applebaum shrugged off the administration's problems as media exaggerations and set a financial goal of cutting the city budget of $4.5 billion by $170 million and holding tax increases to the rate of inflation.
35.
Michael Applebaum attributed his promotion to the sound management of his borough.
36.
However, several francophone councillors disputed that claim, saying that Michael Applebaum speaks creditable French.
37.
Michael Applebaum won in part by reaching out more actively than Deschamps to the opposition Vision Montreal and Projet Montreal parties and the bloc of independent councillors who resigned from Union Montreal in the same period, most notably by promising to share seats on the Montreal Executive Committee in a non-partisan coalition.
38.
On November 19,2012, Michael Applebaum was sworn in as interim mayor of Montreal at the Hall Honor at Montreal City Hall.
39.
Michael Applebaum put forward a 100-day plan of property tax cuts, increased funding for public transit, and a freeze on public works projects.
40.
In January 2013, Michael Applebaum announced that the city was creating the EPIM, a municipal police squad to investigate political corruption in the city.
41.
Michael Applebaum acknowledged the meeting with UPAC and the Charbonneau Commission but denied he was being investigated and refused to disclose the topic of discussion.
42.
Subsequent reports from le Devoir revealed that as a city councillor, Michael Applebaum attended a Union Montreal fundraising event on August 28,2003, along with Mayor Gerald Tremblay, Tremblay's brother Marcel, then a city councillor, and Frank Zampino, then chairman of the city executive committee.
43.
Michael Applebaum again denied any wrongdoing and accused the media of a smear campaign.
44.
Michael Applebaum continued to deny that he was a target of these investigations.
45.
The report suggested that Michael Applebaum had let Lalli know that the borough was interested in building a borough city hall on the site, an allegation confirmed by Lalli but denied by Michael Applebaum.
46.
Michael Applebaum described Frank Zampino, president of the executive committee before Applebaum, as the architect.
47.
Michael Applebaum was arrested by Quebec's anti-corruption unit UPAC at his home on June 17,2013.
48.
Michael Applebaum initially faced 14 charges including fraud, conspiracy, breach of trust, and corruption in municipal affairs.
49.
On June 18,2013, Michael Applebaum announced his resignation as mayor of Montreal, maintaining that the allegations against him were unfounded.
50.
Michael Applebaum hired Marcel Danis, a criminal lawyer and former member of Parliament, as his defence attorney.
51.
Michael Applebaum's preliminary hearing was scheduled for June 2015, immediately before Zajdel's trial.
52.
On January 26,2017, Michael Applebaum was found guilty of eight corruption-related charges.
53.
On March 30,2017, Michael Applebaum was sentenced to 12 months in prison and two years of probation.
54.
The judge said that Michael Applebaum had committed "very serious" crimes.
55.
On June 6,2017, Michael Applebaum was granted parole after serving two months or one-sixth of his sentence after admitting to his crimes and expressing remorse for his criminal actions at his parole hearings.
56.
Michael Applebaum was released on condition that he do 20 hours of community work per week.
57.
In May 2017, the city of Montreal authorized lawyers to take court action to retrieve a $160,000 departure allowance that Michael Applebaum received from the city when he resigned as mayor.
58.
In 2020, Quebec Superior Court ruled that Michael Applebaum could keep a total of $268,000 because the new rules went into effect after Michael Applebaum was convicted.
59.
In July 2018, Michael Applebaum appealed the decision in Quebec Court, arguing that his crimes did not involve his real estate practice.
60.
Michael Applebaum withdrew the court appeal in October 2018 when the judge refused to delay hearing of the case.