Ex-employees ask how convicted fraudster obtained pandemic support while their wages went unpaid

More than a dozen former employees of Rob Roche, a Canadian businessman with a controversial past, say they are owed thousands in wages. It is the latest issue for a man with a globe-spanning pattern of debt and deceit that stretches back 30 years, a CBC News investigation has learned.

The 63-year-old Roche has made a career out of taking control of struggling businesses and stripping their assets, earning himself the nickname “The Liquidator,” after he shut down a chain of 29 discount stores in Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the mid-1990s, throwing 400 people out of work. 

Court records and media coverage