A restaurant owner jailed for fraudulently securing a bounce back loan during the coronavirus pandemic has been ordered to pay the funds back in full with interest. Ilhan Kekec, 36, was jailed last year for overstating his company’s turnover to secure a £30,000 loan in May 2020.
He was sent to prison for two-and-a-half years in March 2024 after a trial at Isleworth Crown Court. The restaurant owner has since been ordered to repay £37,426 within three months or face an additional 18 months behind bars.
Kekec, of Abbotts Drive in Waltham Abbey, will still have to repay the loan should his prison sentence be extended. He was also ordered to pay £15,900 in costs.
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Alexander Grierson, head of asset recover at the Insolvency Service, said Kekec fraudulently claimed the cash and used it to pay off personal debts. He said: “This was not how the loans were supposed to be used and Kekec himself declared in his application that he would use the money for the economic benefit of his business. Securing this confiscation order is important as it means Kekec must pay this money back in full or spend even longer in prison.”
Kekec falsely claimed the turnover of his Hizirali Ltd business was £125k in May 2020 when applying for the loan. The firm was set up by Kekec to run the Derwish Kebab Restaurant inside the food court of the East Shopping Centre in Forest Gate.
He had traded for three years through another company, Helosh Limited, as the Derwish Restaurant on St Albans Road, Watford, before opening this second restaurant. However, his new venture only traded for three weeks before the Covid lockdown and he was unable to open during that period.
Kekec withdrew the Bounce Back Loan money in cash and later admitted to Insolvency Service investigators that he spent the funds on clearing personal debts. He applied to dissolve his company in June 2020, claiming it was no longer economically viable for him to run the restaurant.
However, he deliberately failed in his statutory duty to inform his creditors within seven days of his voluntary strike-off application with Companies House. Kekec was also banned as a company director for three years when he was sentenced for his offences earlier in the year.