London restaurateur banned for under-declaring income

The boss of Brasseria Timisoreana in London’s Edgware has been disqualified for seven years after deliberately suppressing sales income from the tax authorities.

JJ Timisoreana was incorporated in October 2014 and Mihaela Solga, 50, from Edgware, was appointed as the company’s sole director.

The company traded as Brasseria Timisoreana but, four years later, the restaurant experienced difficult trading conditions and entered liquidation in October 2018.

Investigators from the Insolvency Service were made aware of JJ Timisoreana’s failure and upon further enquiries, uncovered that the company’s business records were incomplete in many instances.

It was soon discovered that Solga, also known as Hussain or Sarpe, had caused JJ Timisoreana to under-declare the correct amount of tax between 2015 and 2018 and, at the point of liquidation, owed the tax authorities more than £406,000.

On 23 January 2020, the Secretary of State accepted a disqualification undertaking from Solga after she did not dispute that she caused inaccurate statutory returns to be submitted to the tax authorities.

The ban is effective from 13 February 2020, after which Mihaela Solga is banned for seven years from acting as a director or directly or indirectly becoming involved, without the permission of the court, in the promotion, formation or management of a company.

Lawrence Zussman, deputy head of insolvent investigations for the Insolvency Service, said: “Mihaela Solga failed to take her responsibilities as a director seriously and deliberately caused the company behind her restaurant to not pay the correct amount of taxes as she was duty-bound to do so.

“Much of the public service is funded by the correct amount of taxes being paid and Mihaela Solga’s misconduct has resulted in her being removed from the business environment for a substantial amount of time.”

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