Day: September 18, 2018

Following a joint investigation by the Insolvency Service and the Metropolitan Police, Sarkis Agop Kouyoumdjian (55), of Kensington High Street, West London, appeared at Southwark Crown Court on Friday 14 September where he also received a nine year directorship disqualification.

The court heard that in November 2011, Sarkis Kouyoumdjian voluntarily accepted a disqualification undertaking in connection with the failure of a company that he was a director of which ran a restaurant and owed unpaid taxes. The disqualification meant that he was banned from running companies for four years without the permission of the courts.

However, Sarkis Kouyoumdjian ignored the ban which he had personally accepted and in direct contravention of his disqualification, between November 2011 and May 2014 continued to run two branches of Middle-Eastern restaurant, Massis, as well as Asian fusion restaurant, Cocochan.

In addition to running the restaurants and their connected companies without permission from the courts, Sarkis Kouyoumdjian carried out other offences.

Sarkis Kouyoumdjian ran the restaurants through two companies, Live London Limited and Plaha Catering & Events Limited, but use of the restaurants’ names had been banned through earlier insolvencies and Sarkis Kouyoumdjian’s connection with them.

He fraudulently transferred £59,000 to an associate from a company that he shouldn’t have been running shortly before it entered into Creditors Voluntary Liquidation and also failed to deliver to the liquidator all the files that were needed to help formally shut down the company.

And between 2012 and 2013 Sarkis Kouyoumdjian operated a property company, Tamarix Properties Limited.

The property company bought a number of flats in West London from another insolvent company connected to Sarkis Kouyoumdjian, using money from one of the restaurants he shouldn’t have been running. Sarkis Kouyoumdjian also used money from Tamarix Properties to benefit one of the companies connected to the restaurants.

On 5 September at Southwark Crown Court, Sarkis Kouyoumdjian pleaded guilty to four counts of running companies while disqualified, two counts of using a prohibited company name, as well as one count of fraudulently removing property in anticipation of the commencement of the winding up of a company and another count of failing to deliver up books and records to a liquidator.

Ian West, Deputy Chief Investigation Officer of the Insolvency Service, said:

Sarkis Kouyoumdjian knew exactly what he’d signed up for when he accepted his four-year disqualification but he brazenly ignored its restrictions and continued running restaurants and a property company.

This was a flagrant abuse of company and insolvency law and thanks to the joint investigation with the Metropolitan Police, Sarkis Kouyoumdjian’s sentence should serve as a warning to others that such abuses will be investigated and disqualifications will be enforced.

Detective Inspector Andy Brien of the Metropolitan Police Service said:

This is a prime example of how the Metropolitan Police working together with agencies such as the Insolvency Service can bring offenders to justice. Sarkis Kouyoumdjian showed a complete disregard for the law using companies to build personal gain.

Notes to editors

A disqualification order has the effect that without specific permission of a court, a person with a disqualification cannot:

• act as a director of a company
• take part, directly or indirectly, in the promotion, formation or management of a company or limited liability partnership
• be a receiver of a company’s property

Disqualification undertakings are the administrative equivalent of a disqualification order but do not involve court proceedings.

Persons subject to a disqualification order are bound by a range of restrictions.

The Insolvency Service administers the insolvency regime, investigating all compulsory liquidations and individual insolvencies (bankruptcies) through the Official Receiver to establish why they became insolvent. It may also use powers under the Companies Act 1985 to conduct confidential fact-finding investigations into the activities of live limited companies in the UK. In addition, the agency deals with disqualification of directors in corporate failures, assesses and pays statutory entitlement to redundancy payments when an employer cannot or will not pay employees, provides banking and investment services for bankruptcy and liquidation estate funds and advises ministers and other government departments on insolvency law and practice.

Further information about the work of the Insolvency Service, and how to complain about financial misconduct, is available.

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The Regulator of Social Housing reports that Trinity Housing Association Limited has been placed on its Grading under Review list.

It notifies that at the time of the last Statistical Data Return the provider had fewer than 1,000 homes each and therefore does not have a current published regulatory judgement in accordance with our established procedures.

The regulator is currently investigating a matter regarding the providers’ compliance with the Governance and Financial Viability Standard. The outcome of the investigation will be confirmed in a regulatory notice, once completed.

The regulator’s GUR list is available on the website.

Further information

1. The GUR list includes providers being investigated for an issue that may result in non-compliant grades for the Governance and/or Financial Viability Standard.
2. The regulatory framework can also be found on the website.
3. The regulation of social housing is the responsibility of the Regulation Committee, a statutory committee of the Homes and Communities Agency. The organisation refers to itself as the Regulator of Social Housing in undertaking the functions of the Regulation Committee. Homes England is the trading name of the HCA’s non-regulation functions.
4. The regulator’s purpose is to promote a viable, efficient and well-governed social housing sector able to deliver homes that meet a range of needs. It does this by undertaking robust economic regulation focusing on governance, financial viability and value for money that maintains lender confidence and protects the taxpayer. It also sets consumer standards and may take action if these standards are breached and there is a significant risk of serious detriment to tenants or potential tenants.

For more information visit the RSH website.

Our About the Regulator of Social Housing page has contact details for media enquiries.

For general queries to RSH, please email enquiries@rsh.gov.uk or call 0300 124 5225.

In the first speech in Japanese by a UK minister, Jeremy Hunt makes personal commitment to the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

In remarks to representatives from UK-Japan exchange programmes, the Foreign Secretary is expected to say:

I came to this country for the first time in 1990 to learn Japanese. I lived for eight months in Kyoto, then six months in Nagasaki, followed by six months in Tokyo. I was introduced to Japan and wonderfully looked after by Japanese families all over the country, and I always try to meet them when I come back.

Today, I am here to take forward the new era of friendship between Britain and Japan. We have so much in common as two island nations who strongly support the rules-based international system that has delivered peace and prosperity for many years.

Our friendship stretches back to the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 – and I am sure it will strengthen in the years ahead, not least because for the first time there is a British Foreign Secretary who can speak a little Japanese.

Attendees at the event will include representatives from the Oxford University Alumni Association, who has approximately 1,500 alumni living in Japan, the British Council and Daiwa Scholarships, an Anglo-Japanese Foundation established in 1988 to support closer links between Britain and Japan.

The Foreign Secretary lived in Japan while in his twenties, and will today meet the families he stayed with at the time: the Fujimoto family, who he stayed with in Tokyo; and the Ito family he stayed with in Nagasaki.

Further information

• Follow the Foreign Secretary on Twitter @Jeremy_Hunt and Facebook
• Follow the Foreign Office on Twitter @foreignoffice and Facebook
• Follow the Foreign Office on Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn