A popular Kenyan fine-dining restaurant in DC allegedly stole wages from hundreds of its employees, according to a lawsuit from the DC Attorney General's Office. Swahili Village on M Street allegedly stiffed its servers, hosts, food runners, bussers, and bartenders, paying as little as $5 an hour— including tips—and neglecting to provide legally required overtime
Swahili Village owner Kevin Onyona at the entrance to his fine-dining Kenyan restaurant in 2020. Photograph courtesy of Swahili Village.
The lawsuit contends that the restaurant’s executives, Kevin Onyona and Emad Shoeb, rampantly and systematically violated the city’s tipped minimum wage law and other worker protections. The restaurant adds a 20 percent gratuity to all checks, but the owners allegedly pocketed large quantities of tips, and compensated some employees exclusively through tips, with total wages far below minimum wage or even DC’s tipped minimum wage. Some workers allegedly were underpaid by up to $5,000.
“Our investigation indicates that Swahili Village DC and its executives, Kevin Onyona and Emad Shoeb, persistently and systematically failed to pay hundreds of hard-working restaurant workers the wages, tips, and benefits they were legally entitled to receive, violating the basic wage, overtime, sick leave, and record-keeping rules that all District employers are required to follow,” DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a statement.
After receiving a tip, the attorney general’s office spoke to more than a dozen Swahili Village employees during a lengthy pre-suit investigation. The lawsuit claims that Onyona and Shoeb kept no regular payroll records, which kept their employees in the dark about how their pay was calculated and what was being deducted. Some employees allegedly clocked over 60 hours of work per week without earning overtime, which by law must be 1.5 times the regular rate.
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