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La Shish Closes 11 Metro Eateries
The La Shish restaurant chain, which helped popularize Middle Eastern cuisine in metro Detroit, went out of business Saturday night — the victim of bad publicity involving its fugitive owner, Talal Chahine, whom federal prosecutors linked to terrorism.
“It’s a real tragedy,” the chain’s lawyer, Robert Forrest of Detroit, said Sunday.
He said the closure affects 11 metro Detroit restaurants, the chain’s headquarters and its food preparation facility in Dearborn, as well as its 305 employees, who were informed of the decision Sunday morning.
Chahine, a former Ford Motor Co. engineer, opened his first restaurant in 1989 in east Dearborn, and it grew from there. At its peak, the chain had more than 600 employees.
Forrest said Michigan’s declining economy, a refusal by state treasury officials to approve the sale of the chain and use the proceeds to pay back taxes, and the recent foreclosure on the Dearborn commissary also contributed to the chain’s demise.
He said the chain’s real estate, equipment and furnishings will be sold to pay its state and federal tax debts.
Another metro Detroit lawyer blamed the closings on the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit for refusing to approve the sale unless Chahine returned to the United States to face charges. The lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of antagonizing federal prosecutors, said the refusal caused people to needlessly lose their jobs — and the state and federal governments to be stuck with a tax loss approaching $12 million.
U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy declined to comment, as did the Michigan Department of Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation division.
Murphy’s staff had said that the government wouldn’t negotiate with Chahine while he was a fugitive.
Hungry customers disappointed
“Now what am I going to eat?” customer Linda Nowinski, 56, of Livonia said Sunday after pulling up to a La Shish drive-through window in Westland. She said she and coworkers regularly ate at the restaurant.
“There are lots of Middle Eastern restaurants in metro Detroit, but La Shish’s name was the most recognizable,” Free Press restaurant critic Sylvia Rector said.
“Their food was terrific,” Rector added, saying it helped Chahine create a reputation and open more stores.
An employee, Nem Nissimov, 16, of St. Clair Shores said he found out about the closing when he showed up for work Sunday and saw a sign on the door. He said he was worried about getting his last paycheck and cashing three others.
The chain’s undoing began in April 2005 when federal agents raided Chahine’s homes and headquarters looking for evidence that he had created a dual set of computerized books to evade $6.9 million in federal income taxes.
In May 2006, he was indicted with his wife, Elfat El Aouar, on tax evasion charges. By then, Chahine had fled to Lebanon, with $20 million he had skimmed from the business, authorities allege. The same month, prosecutors filed court papers saying he was a keynote speaker in 2002 at a fund-raising event in Lebanon for Hizballah, which the U.S. government has designated as a foreign terrorist group. He later pledged to return to face charges but hasn’t.
Since then, he has been indicted for vouching for the marriage of an illegal Lebanese immigrant, Nada Prouty, who went on to get key jobs at the FBI and CIA and may have leaked sensitive information from Hizballah files to Chahine, prosecutors said.They said he vouched for Prouty to get her job at the FBI.
El Aouar, who is Prouty’s sister, was sentenced last week to 90 days in prison for marriage fraud. The time is to be served simultaneously with an 18-month sentence for tax fraud. Her citizenship also was revoked.
The bad publicity caused two of Chahine’s franchise owners in West Bloomfield and Ann Arbor to pull out of the chain in 2006 and rename their restaurants to stay afloat. Charges of terrorist ties harmful.
Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News in Dearborn, said federal prosecutors drove La Shish out of business by recklessly accusing Chahine of supporting Hizballah.
“It broke down the trust between the customers and the merchant,” he said, adding that customers didn’t want to support someone who might be sending money to terrorists. He said the government has made similar reckless claims that have hurt Islamic charities.
Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the shuttering of the chain “is a great loss,” but said the case shows what happens when a businessman breaks the law, a reference to the tax evasion charge.
By David Ashenfelter, Detroit Free Press