SHINZO restaurant, which criticised the government for a lack of pandemic support when it closed in the spring, owes more than £63,000 in ITIS tax payments, it has emerged.
Earlier this month, the Royal Court granted an application by the Treasurer of the States to seize and sell the company’s moveable property to satisfy the debt built up in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
In May, the restaurant’s owner, Gavin Roberts, announced the St Aubin restaurant’s closure, claiming he was owed £85,000 from the government’s Co-funded Payroll Scheme established to support businesses through the pandemic. He said the government’s administration of the support package had been ‘a constant barrier to trying to grow the business’ and said the restaurant would still be open if he had received the money he said he was owed.
However, responding to Mr Roberts’s claims, Customer and Local Services director general Ian Burns said that the company had received in the region of £229,000 from the government’s business support schemes and outstanding claims had been satisfied.
Now it has emerged that Shinzo owes the government £63,058.78 after they failed to appear before the Royal Court to challenge an application made on behalf of the Treasurer of the States. Deputy Bailiff Robert MacRae, sitting with Jurats Steven Austin-Vautier and Karen Le Cornu, ordered the company to pay the outstanding sum and gave the Treasurer permission to ‘cause the defendant’s moveables to be distrained and sold’ to recover the amount.
And last month the Employment Tribunal ordered Shinzo to pay two former staff member at the restaurant nearly £6,000 in unpaid wages after the company admitted it owed money to the employees. Claims for unfair dismissal or constructive dismissal, notice and holiday pay, and compensation for not issuing payslips – which the company denies – remain unresolved.
