Government is suing four Bermudian companies, including the owners of the Little Venice restaurant group - but it won't say why.

The Ministry of Finance issued the writs against Little Venice owners MEF Enterprises Ltd., J&C Construction and Maintenance Ltd., Creative Accents Ltd., and Pemco Ltd., on January 31.

The Attorney General's Chambers, which issued the writs, did not respond to a number of calls from The Royal Gazette this week for details.

And Government's press office was also unable to get information from the AG's Chambers about the legal action.

MEF said on Tuesday the court action concerned a "technical issue" over payroll tax, but it stressed the group has consistently paid all its payroll tax.

"We have consistently paid all our payroll tax for the entire group, but there is a technical issue to resolve over whether part of the group should pay the restaurant rate or the non-restaurant rate for the administrative staff," the directors of MEF said in a statement yesterday.

"This is an old issue that does not affect our current status, as we have changed the objects of our company to restrict it to only restaurant related activities in accordance with advice from the appropriate government departments.

"We felt confident that we can resolve the technical aspects of this matter, in respect of what constitutes restaurant employees, before we made this change."

In 2001, Pemco was charged with, and pleaded not guilty to, with failing to provide information to the Commission for Unity and Racial Equality (CURE), which was collecting data from companies on the racial make-up of their workforce.

Neither Pemco nor J&C Construction and Maintenance could be contacted for comment yesterday.

A spokesman at Architectural firm Creative Accents said: "It's the first I've heard. Where did you get the information? I don't know anything about this. It has come straight out of the blue."