Former U of Manitoba law dean accused of fraud loses bid to fight extradition from France
Jonathan Black-Branch has lost his bid to avoid extradition from France to Canada to face fraud charges.
Jonathan Black-Branch was arrested in a Paris suburb in April
Darren Bernhardt · CBC News
·
Listen to this article
Estimated 3 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Jonathan Black-Branch has lost his bid to avoid extradition from France to Canada to face fraud charges.
A French court on Friday ruled in support of the request.
The 64-year-old former dean of the University of Manitoba's law school in Winnipeg is accused of misusing more than $600,000 from the university to pay his bills, buy pricey meals at a members-only club and spend on his education at Ivy League schools.
He was under an international arrest warrant issued when found in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb just west of Paris in April. The extradition request was issued in May.
Black-Branch appeared in the Versailles Court of Appeal three weeks ago, arguing against his extradition. The court reserved its decision to Nov. 6.
No date has been given for when the extradition will take place.
French court to decide next month on extradition for former U of Manitoba law dean accused of fraud
Professor hopes former University of Manitoba law dean will 'be held to account' after overseas arrest
Black-Branch was hired as U of M's law dean in 2016 but abruptly left the post in 2020 and moved to Europe amidst an internal investigation by the university into financial mismanagement.
Later that year, the University of Southampton in the U.K. announced Black-Branch as the new head of its law school. He is originally from England and was called to the bar there in 1995.
Days later, though, the university changed course and announced it would no longer be hiring him.
In 2023, a months-long law hearing by the Law Society of Manitoba found Black-Branch had committed professional misconduct and the U of M asked Winnipeg police to investigate criminal charges, but his whereabouts were unknown by then.
The Law Society of Manitoba disbarred him in 2024 and fined him $36,000.
The same year, the U of M sued Black-Branch and he was ordered in a default judgment to pay nearly $680,000 and more than $3,000 in costs, plus three per cent annual interest.
The Bar Standards Board for England and Wales has since barred him from practising law there, too, citing his actions in Manitoba as "blatant and sustained dishonesty."
Disgraced former Manitoba law dean racked up millions in Swiss debt ahead of France arrest, documents suggest
Law dean facing extradition to Canada taught at German for-profit school for years
During his time in Europe Black-Branch had been working at Germany's largest university for several years.
He was a lecturer at the for-profit IU International University of Applied Sciences from late 2021 until mid-2025, school spokesperson Christin Eitner told CBC News in October.
Black-Branch also sought to be naturalized as a Swiss citizen in late 2023, though it was unclear as to whether he completed that process.
Documents show he racked up about $5.6 million in debt in Switzerland, most of it tied to real estate.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Darren Bernhardt has been with CBC Manitoba since 2009 and specializes in offbeat and local history stories. He is the author of two bestselling books: The Lesser Known: A History of Oddities from the Heart of the Continent, and Prairie Oddities: Punkinhead, Peculiar Gravity and More Lesser Known Histories.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.