Wagh applied for a second £50,000 Bounce Back loan for Talensetu, a recruitment company, in July 2020, this time from a different bank.
She claimed a turnover of £225,000 despite having estimated its turnover for the next calendar year as £72,000 on the bank account application form she completed the same day.
Wagh also falsely declared this was the company’s only Bounce Back loan application.
After receiving the funds in August, Wagh again transferred almost all of it into her personal account and spent it on stocks and shares, and paying off personal finance.
She followed this up with a fourth fraudulent application in August 2020, seeking £50,000 for White Coconut Ltd – which traded as an Indian street food outlet in Cardiff.
She claimed a turnover of £252,000, again contradicting the £72,000 estimate she provided on her bank account application.
Wagh again falsely declared this was the company’s only Bounce Back loan application, despite having already secured £18,000 from Lloyds Bank for the same business four months earlier.
Her final fraudulent application came in September 2020, when she applied for a £50,000 loan for Indian Canteen Ltd – a street food business incorporated in January of that year.
Wagh claimed a turnover of £206,000, despite estimating on her bank account application that the company’s turnover for the next year would be just £82,000.
She later transferred more than £25,000 of the loan funds to White Coconut Ltd.
In interviews with the Insolvency Service, Wagh admitted using the funds to pay off personal credit card debts and loans, saying she thought that by clearing her personal debts, she would be helping her businesses.
Jack Barry, defending, said: “My client was going through a divorce in 2016 and a difficult personal time and this was not for enrichment but to preserve her companies for her staff during the Covid pandemic.”
He added Wagh had become “confused” on one application and thought she was applying for a “top up” loan from the initial £18,000.
David Snasdell, chief investigator at the Insolvency Service, said Wagh “systematically targeted a scheme designed to help genuine businesses survive the pandemic”.