Mayfair nightclub Aura faces being wound up over unpaid tax bill

 
Heiress: Tamara Ecclestone once spent thousands of pounds during a night out at the venue (Picture: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire)

An exclusive West End nightclub where Formula One heiress Tamara Ecclestone once spent £30,000 on champagne in one night faces being wound up today over unpaid tax.

The High Court action is being taken against Aura Mayfair on St James’s Street, which has been hit by a string of complaints about late night rowdiness. Officials from HM Revenue and Customers claim that the company behind the venue, which is 30 per cent owned by QPR boss and aviation tycoon Tony Fernandes, owes thousands in taxes.

Mr Fernandes’s consortium took over Aura in 2010 and guests have since included Rihanna and Madonna, who reportedly visited the venue so frequently that she held talks in 2011 about buying a stake in it.

But the fortunes of the club, where there was a £500 minimum spend on tables, have nosedived over the past year, culminating in today’s winding up petition. It was originally filed on May 2 by HMRC, which claims to be a creditor of parent company Merlot 73.

The company’s most recent accounts for the year to the end of March 2013 show that it owes creditors £741,532, up from £488,874 the previous year.

The move by the taxman follows a lengthy dispute with Westminster council over noise and drunkenness outside the now closed venue. The local authority said the club had become a focus of “crime and disorder” and pointed to spirits being left on tables so clients could “drink direct from the bottle” as “a particular cause of drunkenness”.

The police wanted the club’s licence revoked and last August the council’s licensing sub-committee imposed more than 20 conditions, including that the doors be closed to punters at midnight.

Venue boss Alberto Barbieri appealed, saying the restrictions would lead to closure, putting staff out of work and wasting up to £2 million of investment. The appeal was dismissed in April last year and in a final effort the owners launched judicial review proceedings. This too failed, with a High Court judge ruling in November that Aura was still “causing a serious crime and disorder problem”.

No-one from the club was available for comment.

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