Stephen Roche ordered to repay €750.000 after fraud

Stephen Roche, former winner of the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, World championships and many more races, was the owner of a cycling tourism company in Mallorca, and has been ordered to repay €750.000 which he took in the past.

Extra.ie reported that the former Irish rider was found guilty of negligently bankrupting his business firm and using the stolen money to finance a luxury lifestyle. He's been ordered to repay €750.000 as a consequence, and faces the risk of criminal prosecution.

The case judge has confirmed that "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."

"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 weren’t paid," he added.