Indian coffee mogul disappears and police fear suicide

Siddhartha, aged about 60, was last seen by his driver while he was walking on a bridge in the state of Karnataka, in the south of the city. 39; India. Seeing that he was not coming back, the driver alerted the authorities.

Police divers, badisted by local fishermen, searched the waters of the Nethravathi River near the town of Mangalore, while Karnataka politicians visited the coffee tycoon to support his family.

According to the local press, V.G. Siddhartha was in a depressed state due to several tax audits in 2017. Various media have published a millionaire letter addressed to shareholders of companies in which he regretted having abandoned "the people who trusted him".

"I have long struggled but today I gave up because I could not stand the pressure of any of the partners who had forced me to buy their shares"says the letter, which looks like a letter of goodbye.

V. G. Siddhartha, who has been in the coffee business for 130 years, owns 12,000 hectares of plantations, and his Amalgamated Bean Company (ABC) is the largest exporter of green coffee in India (unroasted).

In 1996, it launched the Coffee Coffee Day chain, which has 1,700 stores in India, but also in Malaysia, Egypt, the Czech Republic and Austria.

Coffee Day Enterprises, whose title lost 20% of its value Tuesday after learning of the disappearance of Siddhartha, affirmed that "this would guarantee the continuity of the company".