LONDON: The director of an Indian restaurant company in Brighton on the south coast of England has been banned for six years after an investigation found that he had under-declared the taxes he owed to the UK's revenue department.
Byron St John Swales, 56, was the director of Indian Summer UK Limited, which traded as the Indian Summer restaurant on East Street in Brighton.
The company was incorporated in September 2003 but inspections carried out by the tax authorities in 2016 found the company owed over 130,000 pounds in tax, including interest and penalties.
Byron Swales concealed transactions from company books for over seven years to avoid tax obligations and keep money destined for the public purse, said David Argyle, Deputy Head of Investigations for the UK's Insolvency Service.
As a result of our investigations, Byron Swales will be banned from the business environment for six years, severely curtailing his activities, he said.
The company entered into a creditors' voluntary liquidation in May 2019 and Indian Summer UK was referred to the Insolvency Service for investigation.
Investigators were able to establish that Swales had under declared the restaurant's orders and that he had failed to accurately account for tax owed from December 2011 until February 2018.
It concluded that Indian Summer UK owed 130,174 pounds in tax, interest and penalties and therefore the restaurant owner has now been banned from being a company director for six years.
The government accepted a "disqualification undertaking" from Swales in May this year, which makes his ban effective from June 19, 2020.
Disqualification undertakings are the administrative equivalent of a disqualification order but do not involve court proceedings, with persons subject to it order are bound by a range of restrictions.