Judge orders Roche to repay €750,000 cash from bust firm
FALLEN cycling hero Stephen Roche ruined his own firm’s dire financial situation by financing his ‘luxurious lifestyle’ with company money, a judge has found.
Mr Roche was also ordered to repay nearly €750,000 after the judge blasted him for ‘knowingly and negligently’ bankrupting his Spanish firm by plundering it to finance a luxury lifestyle.
The 1987 Tour de France winner was savaged in a damning 41-page civil court ruling which also disqualifies him from being a company director in Spain for seven years, our sister paper, the Irish Mail on Sunday, revealed yesterday.
It emerged just over three years ago that the Dubliner was facing accusations he had acted fraudulently by creditors owed hundreds of thousands of euro, following the collapse of his cycling tourism business in Majorca.
The father of four and former professional road racer, regarded as one of the finest cyclists of his generation, broke down in tears in a tell-all interview at the time as he spoke of the financial problems besetting him.
Mr Roche, 62, was facing more anguish after losing his court fight to prove he was not at fault for Shamrock Events SL going bust and leaving his main creditors – two hotels in Majorca he used to work with – out of pocket to the tune of nearly €400,000.
Judge Margarita Isabel Poveda Bernal ruled that Mr Roche had ignored warnings from his own staff that his firm was in trouble.
She also said he worsened its dire financial situation by financing his ‘luxurious lifestyle’ with company money that he should have used to pay the businesses he owed money to, in a deliberate and conscious ‘asset-stripping’ exercise that now exposes him to a possible criminal prosecution.
In the extremely critical written sentence, the judge said it had been proven that the former cyclist’s conduct in ‘generating and aggravating’ the insolvency of Palma Nova-based Shamrock Events SL, as its owner and sole administrator, had been ‘malicious or gravely negligent’
She added: ‘Mr Roche was perfectly conscious of its debt situation, and instead of adopting measures to avoid financing the company, or entering into voluntary insolvency, he continued to loot the company accounts for his own private use when there was a minimum amount of income in them.’
Concluding the former Dublin dairy apprentice machinist had generated ‘90%’ of his firm’s debts with his actions, the Palma-based judge ruled: ‘I coincide with the report of the insolvency practitioner and the creditors who appeared in court in this case.
‘Mr Roche’s sumptuous expenditure on things like golf, apartment rentals, hotels in Switzerland and Hungary, restaurants, clothes stores and fashion houses like Loewe, evidence a life of luxury and spending while his creditors, those who had provided accommodation and meals to his cycling clients and had paid him in advance and borne upfront all the costs associated with their services including personnel, groceries, water and electricity, weren’t paid.’
The ruling by Palma’s Commercial Court Number Three, dated April 13, has just been sent to Mr Roche and the hotels owed money who issued legal proceedings against him.
It marks the culmination of a long-running dispute which originated in 2016 and escalated the following year when the cycling legend allegedly disappeared from Majorca, leaving a trail of debts behind him. It was laid bare during an Irish Mail on Sunday interview with the emotional Irishman in April 2019, around the time the Palma court declared Shamrock Events SL’s mandatory bankruptcy at the request of the company’s creditors.
Mr Roche confirmed that he would be appealing the court ruling – although sources close to the case have warned it is so comprehensive and so damning on so many points that it is unlikely an appeal would succeed.
One said: ‘I’m sure Mr Roche will contest the decision but he’ll simply be buying time in my view.’
Mr Roche denied claims he had fled Majorca in 2017 after things started to go wrong for him and he began falling behind on his payments to hotels he worked with, including the Aparthotel Ponent Mar where his company was headquartered.
In his despairing interview three years ago, he blamed his financial predicament on problems with the sale of a property investment in France and a failed investment in a luxury car sales business, as well as personal setbacks, including the relapse with leukaemia of his then 19-year-old son, Florian.
He also claimed he had been very open with people to whom he owed money about his cash-flow problems, rebutting the idea he had acted fraudulently by insisting: ‘I cannot for the life of me imagine how they could say such stupidity.’
The court ruling paints an entirely different picture, stating: ‘It has been proven Mr Roche disappeared from Majorca in 2017 after some 25 years of business
He financed his ‘luxurious lifestyle’
He is appealing the court ruling
activity and that his disappearance coincided in time with the appropriation of his company’s income and the simultaneous failure to pay the Spanish tax man as well as creditors who had already provided accommodation and meals.’
Most of the €733,866.14 Mr Roche has been ordered to repay to his insolvent company – €715,814.97 – is based on the amount the court says Mr Roche ‘fraudulently and intentionally removed’ from it.
The rest, €18,051.17, is the estimated value of a Volkswagen Transporter Caravelle owned by the company. A witness told the court during a hearing in February that Mr Roche had driven it away from the Aparthotel Ponent Mar, and it is unaccounted for.
The judge declared the Shamrock Events SL insolvency culpable rather than fortuitous in an endorsement of reports and submissions from the company’s creditors and the insolvency practitioner, after hearing evidence from witnesses at the February 9 hearing.