Restaurant owner ‘spent majority of Covid financial support on drinking and gambling’

The owner of an Indian restaurant in Cardiff went bankrupt after spending most of £43,000 worth of Covid-19 financial support on drinking and gambling.

Rathudi Mahesh Manglanand, 47, from Pontypridd, was a sole trader who ran the Chutney Roti Indian restaurant in Cardiff.

The restaurant had already ceased trading prior to the beginning of the pandemic and was therefore not eligible for Covid-19 financial assistance schemes.

However, in April 2020, Manglanand applied for a £25,000 grant from his local council and the following month he applied for a £18,000 Bounce Back Loan.

Manglanand subsequently applied for his own bankruptcy in July 2021, at which point the Insolvency Service began investigating and uncovered his misuse of the Covid-19 financial support schemes.

Manglanand accepted that his business had already ceased trading and told investigators that he had been drinking heavily and “was not thinking straight”. He estimated he had lost around £30,000 though gambling in the space of a year.

The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy accepted a nine-year bankruptcy restrictions undertaking from Manglanand, which commenced on 20 June 2022.

The Official Receiver is assessing assets available to recover the Covid-19 support funding.

Gavin Seymour, deputy official receiver at the Insolvency Service, said: “The Covid-19 support schemes generously provided taxpayer money to support genuine businesses and anyone who abused those schemes should expect to be caught and punished.”

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