Former law school dean wanted on Canada-wide arrest warrant now disbarred in U.K.
A former University of Manitoba law school dean found to have misspent more than $600,000 from publicly-funded university coffers and is wanted by Winnipeg police on a Canada-wide arrest warrant, has been disbarred from practising law in his native U.K.
Just over two years after the Law Society of Manitoba (LSM) disbarred Jonathan Black-Branch following an internal probe into his “professional misconduct,” a Bar and Standards Board (BSB) for England and Wales disciplinary tribunal said in February that he failed to report any of what occurred in Canada when he returned to England.
Citing and relying heavily on the LSM’s 2023 conduct hearing, the board said it decided banishment was the only possible sanction for Black-Branch’s “blatant and sustained dishonesty,” which it said risked undermining public trust and confidence in the legal profession.
In a statement to National Post, the Manitoba law society said BSB took appropriate action in response to Black-Branch’s transgressions in Canada and his lack of disclosure.
“To maintain confidence in the regulation of the legal profession, such conduct should result in significant consequences,” the LSM wrote.
BSB also fined him £2,670 (CAD$4,961), adding to the $36,000 penalty already levied by the LSM.
The University of Manitoba sued Black-Branch in 2024, and last year the Court of King’s Bench of Manitoba granted a summary judgment, ordering him to repay the school $679,269.98, as reported by the Penticton Herald . At the behest of other law faculty members, the school later asked police to investigate in 2023.
A spokesperson for the Winnipeg Police Service would only tell National Post that their investigation is ongoing and Black-Branch remains wanted for alleged fraud over $5,000.
The report from the 2023 LSM conduct hearing , which formed the basis for the school’s lawsuit and ultimately led the university to engage police, paints a detailed picture of the regulatory body’s proven civil charges against Black-Branch.
First called to his homeland’s Bar in 1998, he taught at the University of Oxford, then relocated to Canada to take on the leadership role at U of M’s Robson Hall in 2016, becoming chair and director of its privately endowed Marcel A. Desautels Centre for Private Enterprise and the Law the following year. That entity was his primary slush fund, according to affidavits filed during the LSM complaints committee investigation.
An internal audit of his transactions proved that he spent $518,723 on non-degree programs at Harvard and Yale universities between April 2017 and February 2020. More than $472,000 of the expenses were charged to Desautels, which violated the fund’s terms, the school’s conflict-of-interest policy, and “fundamental principles of integrity,” the three-member Manitoba law society discipline committee panel wrote.
While attending the Ivy League courses, he also billed the university over $8,300 for food and lodging, even though it was included in the tuition, they added.
LSM pointed out that expenses charged to the school by all other faculty members combined over the same period amounted to less than $19,000.
Moreover, the society said Black-Branch didn’t seek approval from the Provost to make such expenditures and explicitly routed them through an internal invoice program that essentially allowed him to approve his own expenses.
When staffers asked him about the expenditures, one was told to “stop asking questions and to just pay the amounts.”
“This is the behaviour of a person who was clearly attempting to avoid detection for improper spending,” the panel wrote in Black-Branch’s conduct hearing report.
Not long before his suspected malfeasance came to a head, thanks to whistleblowers who alerted university administration in 2020, he used the system to funnel $75,000 of Desautels funds to the International Society of Law and Nuclear Disarmament (ISLAND), an organization he founded and served as president of its board of trustees while at U of M, the panel wrote. It was the first of three planned annual payments.
Under testimony, one staffer said he instructed her to use Swiss bank accounts, according to The Canadian Press.
Black-Branch was also proven through the school’s audit and subsequent investigation to have spent $50,000 for membership and 201 meals at The Manitoba Club, the first and oldest private club in Western Canada, regularly claiming they were business meetings, despite it being found that he almost always dined alone based on restaurant records.
One local lawyer, whom he claimed had supped with him over university business on 15 occasions, filed an affidavit stating no such meetings ever took place. Another lawyer, whose name appeared on 45 invoices, testified that he dined with Black-Branch only six to eight times, none of which involved U of M or Desautels, and that he paid for the meals several times.
He also expensed close to $3,800 for meals at a board game cafe, which he documented as visits to “research startup ventures” on 44 of the 62 claims, per the LSM tribunal. Black-Branch ceased making any claims when the Provost challenged their validity.
“That the Member would have engaged in this misconduct to this extent, for this length of time, on this many occasions, in this many forms, and involving this many others in the processing of his improper claims is a particular concern,” and increases the seriousness of the allegations, the panel wrote in mid-December 2023.
The University, in a statement to National Post, said it immediately “ replenished the endowment fund via self-insurance.”
Having left Canada for England shortly after an abrupt resignation in spring 2020, Black-Branch never appeared before the LSM, not even virtually, though he did file repeated motions to have it adjourned based on mental health trouble. The LSM said no response ever came to repeated requests that he provide evidence to support that assertion.
He also didn’t appear at the BSB hearing, but his absence means he can request another at a later date.
Black-Branch’s arrest and financial restitution to the school are proving problematic because his precise whereabouts are unknown. According to CTV , his last known address was in Oxford, but court records from the civil suit indicate that he could be in Switzerland.
The University said efforts to recover its funds are “ongoing.”
“Accountability is very important to the university, and UM intends to pursue all available collection remedies to secure payment of the judgment,” the University wrote.
The school has also tightened oversight by adopting a formal fraud-reporting policin, requiring a financial-ethics course for staff and faculty and instituting quarterly audits of all deans’ expenses.
National Post has not been able to locate any contact information for Black-Branch.
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