An Auckland restaurateur has been sentenced to six months' home detention and ordered to pay 25-hundred dollars in reparation on immigration and exploitation charges.

44-year-old Rupinder Singh Chahil is the third person involved with Auckland Indian restaurant chain, Masala, to have been found guilty of underpaying and exploiting migrant workers.

He has been sentenced at the Auckland District Court after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing to a representative charge of providing false or misleading information to an immigration officer.

The court heard that one staff, an Indian national, was made to work about 66 hours a week and was paid around three dollars an hour.

Chahil offered the person a job as an assistant manager at the Mission Bay Masala Restaurant.