Restaurant owner jailed over VAT

AN INDIAN restaurant owner has been jailed for 21 months after he repeatedly changed the names of the premises to evade £86,000 worth of VAT payments.

HM Revenue and Customs took action after discovering 55-year-old Hermann Rodrigues’ scam at his Suruchi restaurant on Nicolson Street and Suruchi Too on Constitution Street in Edinburgh.

He changed the names of the controlling companies and used the identity of others to conceal his involvement.

Both restaurants charged their customers VAT on meals, but he failed to pass this on to HMRC.

Action to recover the evaded taxes is now under way.

Rodrigues, 55, from Kilmaurs Terrace, Edinburgh, committed VAT evasion totalling £86,543 since 2009 and the date of his arrest in December 2011.

He now faces a proceeds of crime action to recover the missing sums of money.