Stephen Roche has said he plans to appeal a €750,000 ruling against him in Spain arising from the collapse of his cycling holiday business in Mallorca back in 2017.
The 1987 Tour, Giro and Worlds winner insisted the conclusions in the ruling were not definitive and he planned to review his options to appeal.
Roche had run the business -Shamrock Events SL – successfully for many years and while some people owed money were paid, a number of creditors were left of out of pocket which the Spanish courts has now ordered he pay back.
Efforts to contact Roche on Sunday were not successful but he told The Sunday Mail he was reviewing his appeal options and that he would fight back from the position he was now in.
“I will bounce back, definitely. I promised my dad I would,” he added of his father Larry who passed away last week. "The big thing is we are appealing. It’s not definitive.
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“We need to wait until the appeal goes through. There’s no proof of a lot of things and there are huge consequences for something that is not totally clear. We still believe we have a chance of turning it around.”
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Roche’s difficulties arising from the collapse of the business have been in the public domain for a number of years, as he spoke about it when the company went into administration in 2019.
The civil case arising from the company collapsing while it owed hundreds of thousands of Euro to hotels in Mallorca was made in Palma’s commercial court last month but is only emerging publicly now.
After the business ran successfully for 25 years, Roche previously said he gotten into difficulty when bookings were hit by the uncertainty caused in the build up to Brexit and after he suffered some setbacks in other ventures.
Back in 2019 he said he had been up front about his difficulties with the people he owed money to. At that time he believed if he had more time he could work his way out of the situation and repay people.
The Palma commercial court has now said he must repay the money - much of it to two hotels and other money it said he took out of the business. The court concluded he had spent money from the company on his lifestyle though it was already in financial trouble.
It also banned him from acting as a company director in Spain for seven years, saying there were several options he should have explored to try to address his problems when they arose.
