French court rules in favour of extraditing former U of M law dean

WINNIPEG — 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 disputed 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.

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 disputed 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.

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.

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.

“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.

» Winnipeg Free Press