London restaurant owner hit with £45k fine over illegal worker pleas to keep licence

The owner of a restaurant that was hit with a £45,000 fine over an illegal worker has pleaded with the local authority to let him renew his licence.

Dilman Ismail Mahmoud told a Westminster City Council Licensing Sub-Committee that he was sorry about the incident and that he was now carrying out regular employment checks at his Bayswater business.

Immigration enforcement officers found that an illegal worker was employed by Sadaf Restaurant during a raid in April 2025. The business was handed a £45,000 civil penalty by the Home Office, who referred it to Westminster City Council for a licensing review in November 2025.

“I don’t want to pay another penalty – it’s hard for me. I’m sorry that this happened,” Mr Mahmoud told the panel, adding: “It’s my business, I need to look after it.”

Legal counsel for Mr Mahmoud, Armin Solimani, said that the employee had been hired while on a student visa in December 2023, but this had expired on May 2024. He told the sub-committee that the worker had told Mr Mahmoud he was applying to renew his student visa but that in the meantime he had the right to work.

Mr Solimani acknowledged that taking this at face value was an “inadvertent error”, at a licensing hearing on Thursday (June 11) at which Mr Mahmoud was applying for a new licence.

“This is a serious and unacceptable error but it was an inadvertent one by someone who didn’t equate himself properly with the rules and should not have taken his employee’s assertions at face value. He’s been severely punished for that,” he said.

While the Home Office had asked for a licence review, Mr Mahmoud appeared before the panel to apply for a new premises licence, after it was discovered that his current one was not valid. This is because a new company – Persian Aroma Ltd – was created after the original Sadaf Restaurant Ltd became bankrupt in September 2022, which actually rendered the licence void. Mr Mahmoud’s legal counsel said that the licence transfer had been done in “good faith” by Mr Mahmoud.

The application was opposed by the Home Office, who said that they believed the business had a “sustained history of non-compliance” with licensing objectives. In their written objection, they accused the business of phoenix activity, where a company liquidises and reopens under a new name to avoid liabilities.

Mr Solimani denied that there had been any phoenix activity, as there was no repeated pattern of liquidising and reopening the business. While the owner has now begun to pay the penalty, the Home Office representative told the sub-committee that this had only begun once they began the review application in last year.

Central London ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) had visited Sadaf on two previous occasions – December 6 2023 and September 19 2024 – during which they were denied entry to the property. Mr Mahmoud said that on one occasion this was due to the lunch rush and the other as he was not on the premises.