That’s the price tag on watching TV in the back office while your family business pays you to be mayor.
Meet John Vassilaki — former mayor of Penticton, British Columbia, and newly minted poster child for why “he’s family, we’ll figure it out” is not a governance strategy.
The B.C. Supreme Court just ordered him to repay $815K to his own family’s liquor store. The highlights reel:
🍺 Collected $108,500 in wages while serving as mayor and physically not being at the store
🌴 Paid family members — including while they were sipping margaritas on a Mexican beach — for hours never worked
📺 Staff described his primary job function as: watching TV in the back office
💸 Used $5K of company funds to pay his personal lawyer in the wrongful dismissal suit he filed against… the company he was stealing from
The court’s verdict on his wrongful dismissal claim? Thrown out. His fiduciary duties? Violated. His brother, in a separate case? Also sued him. (Family dinners must be something.)
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: THIS IS NOT A CRIME STORY. IT’S A GOVERNANCE STORY.
The warning signs never look dramatic in family businesses. They look like payroll nobody questions. A “manager” who doesn’t answer the phone. |
Meetings that never happen. The slow, comfortable blurring of my money and our money.
Until a judge sorts it out at $815K a lesson.
Family businesses are some of the most resilient organizations on earth — and some of the most vulnerable to exactly this kind of slow-burn dysfunction. The fix isn’t complicated. But it requires structure, accountability, and someone with the authority — and the nerve — to say: “No. That’s not how this works.”
That’s the work we do at Sider Road. Before it becomes a headline.
