UK jails Bangladeshi restaurateur for dodging £90,000 in taxes

A court in the UK has sentenced a Bangladeshi owner of an Indian restaurant in Staffordshire to two years in jail for dodging £90,000 in taxes.

Convict Monir Miah, 58, admitted to lying about his income from The Crown of India restaurant at High Street, Stone, and falsifying VAT repayment claims, after an investigation by Her Majesty Revenue and Customs or HMRC.

Monir of Tilling Drive, Stone pleaded guilty to offences contrary to VAT Act 1994 at Manchester Crown Court on Nov 6.

He admitted that VAT was undeclared for the restaurant between August 2011 and January 2016.

The court sentenced him on Dec 11 to two years in prison, with half to be served in custody and the rest on a licence.

Munir was offered the chance to put his tax affairs in order, declare any mistakes or irregularities and pay what he owed in full, plus interest and penalties, through HMRC’s civil Contractual Disclosure Facility (CDF) known as ‘COP9’ when government inspectors routine tax checks raised concerns.

But he only declared half the business the restaurant was doing and deregistered for VAT because the restaurant was allegedly doing so badly.

HMRC began a criminal prosecution as he had failed to make a full disclosure and continued to lie about his business.

The investigation clearly showed how he was illegally under-declaring the true scale of his restaurant business.

HMRC officers discovered the truth by tracing customer payments, counting customers on the premises, and doing test purchases on specific dates, which were compared with his records and tax returns.

Paul Maybury, assistant director, Fraud Investigation Service, HMRC, said, “While Miah, and his family, enjoyed the illegal untaxed income from his restaurant he was depriving public services of vital funding and gave himself an unfair advantage over his honest competitors.”