Montreal mayor gets arrested, quits, collects $267,923.90 in severance

MONTREAL – Montreal’s former interim mayor, who resigned after being slapped with 14 criminal charges, has received more than a quarter-million dollars in severance pay.

Michael Applebaum was handed $267,923.90 as a result of his years spent in municipal government.

Applebaum had been a borough mayor, executive-body chairman, and finally interim mayor for seven months until this spring.

His brief mayoral stint ended with an emotional resignation, after police arrested him on corruption charges in a kickbacks-for-land investigation in his borough.

Applebaum said he would fight to prove his innocence after he was arrested last month, but he said he would step down in the meantime.

City officials say Applebaum was entitled to the severance pay under provincial law — and that no rules exist that would have allowed authorities to withhold it.

Applebaum, as a result of his brief interim stint at city hall, holds the distinction of having been Montreal’s first anglophone mayor in 100 years.