Flood of bosses who flout fines
Directors ignore penalties for employing illegal workers
THREE employees in a fast food takeaway were paid less than the minimum wage – and one got no dough at all, instead being paid in pizzas.
The shocking case highlights how some bosses exploit illegal migrant workers, knowing they are vulnerable and so won’t go to the authorities to complain.
The outrage occurred at the Reading branch of the Tops Pizza chain run by franchisee Masoud Aghabarari.
Five workers escaped through a back door when Home Office officials visited in February last year.
Three were caught when a second inspection was made in April and were found to being paid less than the minimum wage.
Tops Pizza (Reading) Limited was given a £30,000 civil penalty for employing the illegal workers, which brings me to the second problem.
The penalty hasn’t been paid and Aghabarari, a 36-year-old from Iran, has now been banned from being a company director for six years.
Ignoring these penalties is widespread, as numerous other cases prove.
No fewer than 10 illegal workers were discovered at the London laundry company Lily White Linen Ltd, run by Raja Ahmed.
It was given penalties totalling £115,000, but has paid just £3,800.
Ahmed, 50, has been banned from being a director for five years.
Rakesh Thapa and Kalpana Lamichhane ran a tandoori restaurant in West London which employed two illegal workers. The penalty of £20,000 hasn’t been paid and both have got six year directorship bans.
In Bolton, fast food restaurant boss Jahirul Hoque has got a five year ban for employing two illegal workers and failing to pay the £30,000 penalty.
Perhaps not surprisingly, some directors like him also have a lax attitude to other rules, such as basic hygiene.
Last August he was fined £2,500 by magistrates after environmental health officers found the place infested with beetles.
Go looking and you’ll find many more of these cases.
Masum Ahmed, 32, of Direct Trading Surrey, ignored a £60,000 penalty for hiring four illegal staff. Leming Xie, 39, of Pontypridd in South Wales, paid just £2,000 of a £30,000 penalty for employing two illegal workers at Wonderful UK Taste Ltd.
Contempo Restaurant in Bromley, South London, employed six illegal workers and director Sidratul Ahmed, 30, paid just £10,000 of the £60,000 penalty. Shanewas Hossain didn’t pay any of the £30,000 penalty for employing three illegal workers at his company Sushi London (UK) Limited. The Home Office insists that it “robustly” chases payment of the penalties, but how successful is it?
I used the Freedom of Information Act to request figures on the number of unpaid penalties but was informed that it would cost too much to find out the answer. “It would be necessary to manually check just under 11,000 individual records,” I was told.
PS, it’s not only Home Office penalties that go unpaid. Branimir Petrov, 41, ran a car wash in Plymouth, breaking minimum wage rules by underpaying 11 workers a total of £40,480.
He’s been banned from being a director for six years for not paying the shortfall, or a penalty of £69,336 from HM Revenue and Customs’ National Minimum Wage compliance team.
‘‘ Bosses know that illegal staff won’t complain to authorities