Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Montreal’s First Jewish Mayor To Serve 1 Year In Prison For Fraud

MONTREAL (JTA) — Montreal’s first Jewish mayor was handed a one-year prison term and two years probation following his January conviction on eight counts of corruption, breach of trust, and fraud.

“I can guarantee you and my family that I will be a better person when I come out,” Michael Applebaum said in provincial court at his sentencing hearing yesterday.

Applebaum, 54, served for seven months as interim mayor of Montreal before his arrest at his home in 2013 by corruption squad police for alleged crimes committed between 2006 and 2012 while he served as mayor of the city’s largest borough.

He had run on a platform of cleaning up city hall.

Applebaum’s conviction related to accepting kickbacks and favors from engineering firms and real estate developers in exchange for approval of projects.

Applebaum faced a maximum five-year sentence.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version