Court in France rules in favour of Canada’s request to extradite disgraced former U of M law dean

A French court has issued a ruling in favour of Canada’s request to extradite a disgraced dean of law who owes the University of Manitoba more than $700,000.

Jonathan Black-Branch, 65, was arrested, questioned and taken into custody in the spring in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a ritzy suburb of Paris.

Black-Branch — who fled Winnipeg in 2020 following an investigation into his questionable expenses during his four-year deanship at Robson Hall — is wanted on a Canada-wide warrant on a charge of fraud over $5,000.

The former dean of Manitoba’s only law school appeared in the Versailles Court of Appeal on Oct. 16 opposing his extradition.

On Friday, the court’s indictment division announced it had green-lit the first step required to return Black-Branch to Winnipeg to face prosecution for misappropriating university money and scheming to evade oversight of his expenses.

“Today, la chambre de l’instruction (also known as the indictment division or investigating chamber) issued a ruling that is favourable towards Canada’s request to extradite Mr. Black-Branch,” public relations director Valérie Cormont said in a news release in French.

The Free Press has requested a full copy of the decision.

An audit conducted by U of M in 2020 found that Black-Branch used public dollars to visit a members-only club, pay for personal meals and bolster his personal resume with U.S. Ivy League degrees.

Among his questionable expenses, the then-dean set up three instalments of $75,000 to the non-profit he founded — Zurich-based Foundation of International Society of Law and Nuclear Disarmament. The second and third payments were discovered — and scrapped — during the university’s investigation.

Details about his misuse of taxpayer dollars, workarounds to approve his own expenses and direction to subordinates to engage in misconduct were made public in fall 2023 during a series of disciplinary hearings at the Law Society of Manitoba.

(He repeatedly delayed the professional watchdog’s hearings between 2021 and 2023, citing his mental health, and declined to participate when the society did eventually proceed at its headquarters in downtown Winnipeg.)

The initial details released Friday did not come as a surprise to Stéphane Bonifassi, a Parisian lawyer with expertise in international criminal law.

Bonifassi said in an email that he suspects Black-Branch, a Canadian citizen who’d been hiding out in Europe over the last six years, will challenge the ruling.

When reached by phone in Paris for an interview last month, Bonifassi said his country would be “very favourable” to extradition, but the process could drag on for a year or more.

Cases of this kind move through a combination of judicial and bureaucratic phases in France.

An appeal court’s investigating chamber issues a reasoned opinion — in this case, an approval — that is brought to the highest court, France’s Court of Cassation, for review.

“What the judiciary does is, basically, either it says, ‘You cannot extradite him’ or it says, to the government, ‘You can’ — an avis favourable (favourable opinion),” Bonifassi said.

“Then it’s up to the government to decide whether to extradite the person or not so the prime minister has to render an order.”

Such an order must then be reviewed by an administrative court known as the Conseil d’État, he noted.

“All Canada can do at this point is let the French process play out until extradition happens, which it likely will,” said Robert Currie, a professor of transnational criminal law at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Canada’s Department of Justice indicated Friday it had been made aware of the latest development in this case and deferred further comment to its counterpart overseas.

“This extradition is being handled by French authorities on Canada’s behalf,” said Ian McLeod, a media relations adviser for the department.

Black-Branch, whose family originally hails from New Brunswick, spent much of his adult life in England before moving to Winnipeg.

He was called to the bar in 1995 in the U.K., which is where he lived, at least on a part-time basis, before taking the University of Manitoba job.

He oversaw the faculty of law between July 2016 and his sudden, unexplained departure about four years later. His misconduct at the U of M has resulted in the loss of his licenses to practise law locally and abroad.

Public records show Black-Branch has owned property in cities across the globe, including Winnipeg, Oxford (England) and Gachnang, a Swiss municipality located about 40 kilometres northeast of Zurich.

U of M administration has repeatedly faced criticism for failing to take proactive action — including failing to intervene in the summer 2020 sale of his five-bedroom house in Tuxedo — to recoup funds from him.

A group of Robson Hall faculty members contacted city police in December 2023 after a professional disciplinary panel concluded Black-Branch used public funds “exclusively for his personal benefit” and initiated a scheme to bypass internal controls.

The university initiated a lawsuit the following summer. It requested, among other budget line items, upwards of $518,000 in Black-Branch’s personal professional development costs to complete courses run by Harvard University, Northwestern University and the University of Cambridge.

The Manitoba Court of King’s Bench issued a default judgment in May 2025 requiring Black-Branch repay his former employer $682,449.41, as well as interest and the cost of hiring a private investigator who could not locate him.

The Free Press has since revealed Black-Branch was working at a private university in Germany and racking up debt overseas in the leadup to his arrest in April.

U of M leadership plans “to continue to respect the criminal justice process as it unfolds,” in addition to pursuing “all available avenues to secure payment,” a unnamed spokesperson said in a statement Friday.

A source who spent time with Black-Branch after he fled Canada indicated that, as of a year ago, the former dean had three passports.

He was a citizen of Canada, the U.K. and Switzerland, said the individual, who agreed to provide information to the Free Press on the condition of anonymity.

Ottawa has confirmed Black-Branch does not hold French citizenship. France does not entertain extradition requests that involve its citizens.

maggie.macintosh@winnipegfreepress.com