A Hove cafe owner who took £150,000 in covid support funds for two companies which were not trading at the start of the pandemic has narrowly avoided jail.
Mehmet Akyuz, 36, fraudulently obtained three maximum-value Bounce Back Loans worth £50,000 each in 2020 for his Green and Hove Limited and Leathers Wear Limited companies.
Both Green and Hove, trading as Organic Earth Cafe, and Leathers Wear, were dormant at the time of Akyuz’s applications.
Akyuz, of Conway Street, Brighton and Hove, was sentenced to 20 months in prison, suspended for two years, when he appeared at Hove Crown Court on Monday 14 April.
He was also disqualified as a company director for five years and ordered to complete 300 hours of unpaid work.
David Snasdell, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: “Mehmet Akyuz’s actions in fraudulently applying for three Bounce Back Loans he was not entitled to were completely unacceptable.
“This was taxpayers’ money designed to support small businesses through the pandemic and should not have been exploited in such a cynical manner.
“The Insolvency Service remains committed to investigating these cases and bringing fraudsters such as Akyuz to justice.”
Green and Hove and Leathers Wear were incorporated in February and March 2019 with Akyuz as the sole director. The former was a retail food and grocery store with a cafe attached while the latter was described by Akyuz as an importer of leather goods such as bags and belts.
However, neither was trading at the time Akyuz made the fraudulent applications to the banks in the summer and autumn of 2020.
Akyuz fraudulently applied for the £50,000 loan on behalf of Green and Hove in August 2020, claiming the company’s turnover was £270,000.
This declaration was untrue, as Insolvency Service investigations found that the company filed dormant accounts in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Between September 2020 and January 2021, more than £36,000 of the loan was transferred directly to Akyuz. The remainder of the money was paid out in miscellaneous, one-off payments.
Akyuz committed further fraudulent offences in October 2020, when he applied to two separate banks for £50,000 Bounce Back Loans on behalf of Leathers Wear.
In the applications, Akyuz falsely declared that the company had a turnover of £215,000 and £225,000.
However, Leathers Wear also filed dormant accounts in 2020, 2021 and 2022 and was not trading when the application was made.
The funds were again transferred into Akyuz’s personal account and not used for business purposes.
Akyuz unsuccessfully applied to have Leathers Wear struck-off the Companies House register in June 2022 in an attempt to avoid repaying the loan.
The Insolvency Service is seeking to recover the fraudulently obtained funds under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
It is dismaying that a shop which purported to be organic did not carry through all it promised.
Such shops are perhaps better suited to small premises (the large Greens on Blatchington Road also collapsed). Small shops, such as Down to Earth on Portland Road and Kernel of Hove on Victoria Terrace have been there all the while that these larger places have come and gone. There is also Gratitude on Richardson Road. and Harriet’s on George Street.
These shops give one more hope than the Sainsbury which now fills the place which was occupied by by Organic (too bad that Four Seasons came to an end there).
Presume you were being sarcastic old boy. No jail time for nicking 150k during a national crisis? Diversity is our strength. Why is it always the same people?
He was sentenced to 20 months suspended for 2 years.
I would ROB £150k if i knew i would not go to jail. I would also look into tax affairs as they are not honest people.
You know you don’t get to keep it, right?
Why is it all the same people. You know that isn’t factually correct.
Anybody seen Baroness Mone?
I work in business finance and would never advance money to any company without seeing at least year end accounts and evidence of them actually existing. All this is easily done on companies house and would have taken less than five minutes to verify.
They were already robbing people with the prices in there when it was open
Why is the jail sentence suspended?
I had no government help during the Covid lockdowns, and I’m finally paying off my credit card debt now, three years on.
This country is so messed up by those who work the system.