Chinese takeaway boss disqualified from acting as company director for seven years after hiring illegal workers

About this case:

• Citation:
  [2025] CSOH 5
• Judgment:
  External link
• Court:
  Court of Session Outer House
• Judge:
  Lord Braid

Qiqing was made the subject of a petition for a disqualification order by the Business Secretary on 19 March 2024 after he was alleged to have caused his company to breach section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. The petition was served on the respondent, but no answers were lodged in response.

The petition was considered by Lord Braid in the Outer House of the Court of Session. Massaro, advocate, appeared for the petitioner with the respondent making no appearance.

3 of 4 staff

Until 30 May 2022, the respondent was the sole director of a company incorporated in Scotland, QQ Holburn Ltd, which traded as a takeaway restaurant. Following a Home Office visit to the company’s premises on 30 September 2022, a civil penalty of £30,000 was imposed on the company, subsequently mitigated to £15,000, after it was discovered that the respondent had hired three workers who did not have permission to work in the UK. The company was dissolved in March 2024 without the penalty having been paid.

When interviewed by the Home Office at the material time, the respondent accepted that he had not asked any of these employees for any evidence of their right to work in the UK, and in two cases he knew that they did not have any such right. As a result of this conduct, the petitioner sought an order under section 8 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986.

Counsel for the petitioner submitted that it was clear that the petitioner had hired the employees in question and did so in the knowledge that they were not entitled to work in the UK. At least until 30 May 2022, he had the sole responsibility to ensure that the company had appropriate processes in place to comply with legislative requirements and had failed to provide evidence that such processes were in place.

Regarding the length of the order, it was submitted that the case fell into the middle bracket under reference to the well-known analysis in Re Sevenoaks Stationers (Retail) Ltd (1991). A seven-year period was appropriate taking into account the fact that illegal employees made up three of the company’s four total staff, the failure to pay the civil penalty, and the length of time for which the employees were paid cash in hand, from which the respondent benefitted as sole shareholder.

Lack of probity

In his decision, Lord Braid noted the case’s similarity to one he had decided the previous year, Secretary of State for Business and Trade v Azam (2024), saying: “For essentially the same reasons as in Azam, I am satisfied that a disqualification order falls to be made against the respondent. Applying the approach suggested by counsel for the petitioner, there is no doubt that the company operated its business using illegal workers, for which the respondent was personally responsible.”

He continued: “The gravity of such conduct as the respondent’s lies in the fact that it gives an unfair competitive advantage to the company; it gives an opportunity for the exploitation of migrant workers who are usually in a precarious state to begin with; and it exposes the company to a fine. On an objective view of the evidence, the respondent deliberately (or, at best for him, recklessly) breached immigration law for a period of at least one year, probably two.”

Lord Braid said of the way the respondent ran his company: “The company’s business model, such as it was, appears to have been predicated on the employment of illegal workers, given that three out of the company’s total staff complement of four were employed illegally. That had the potentially harmful consequences set out above, and demonstrates such a lack of probity on the part of the respondent as to render him unfit to be involved in the management of a company.”

He concluded: “As for the length of that order, I am conscious that in Azam the length of order imposed was six years. On the other hand, I was not invited to make a longer order in that case and the choice I was presented with was whether to place the case at the top of the lowest bracket or at the bottom of the middle bracket. Having regard in particular to the factors relied upon by the petitioner in this case, I am persuaded that the respondent’s conduct can be regarded as more serious than that of Mr Azam.”

A disqualification order was therefore made in the terms sought for a period of seven years.