The body of the Indian coffee mogul Siddhartha found, according to the police | India News



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The Indian authorities confirmed Wednesday that they had found the body of coffee bar VG Siddhartha, who has been missing since Monday night, in the Nethravathi River near Mangaluru, in the south of Karnataka state.

Siddhartha, the founder of the Coffee Coffee Day (CCD) channel, was no longer available since Monday night, said its flagship entity, Coffee Day Enterprises, in a regulatory file.

"Based on preliminary reports, the police identified the body as VG Siddhartha's," a police officer told Reuters.

His family was warned, added the manager.

Siddhartha was traveling to Mangaluru, a port town located about 350 km from the Indian technology center of Bengaluru, when he had asked his driver to wait on a bridge while he was walking, said a manager. from the police to Reuters. When Siddhartha did not return, the driver alerted the police.

TV stations had shown rescuers in rubber boats searching the Nethravathi River near the bridge where Siddhartha, a native of a coffee family, had been last seen.

The disappearance of Siddhartha frightened investors, resulting in a 20% decline in shares of Coffee Day Enterprises on Tuesday. They fell again by 20% on Wednesday.

According to some Indian media reports, Siddhartha is under pressure for unpaid debts. A letter, allegedly written by Siddhartha, allegedly blamed an anonymous private equity partner for pushing him to buy back shares and to the taxman for "harbadment" and decisions that damaged the company's liquidity .

"I fought for a long time, but today I have given up," Siddhartha reportedly wrote in the letter, available on social media and published by Indian media.

The authenticity of the letter could not be confirmed.

"The investigation into the VG Siddhartha affair and Cafe Coffee Day was born from research into the case of a prominent political leader of Karnataka," says a statement from the Department of Finance. income tax, without naming the politician.

"It relies on the discovery of credible evidence of financial transactions carried out covertly by the CCD."

Coffee Day went public in 2015, nearly two decades after the opening of its first coffee in Bangalore. According to the National Restaurant Association of India, the company has approximately 1,700 outlets, 10 times more than Starbucks operates in the country.

Siddhartha, who began his career as an investment banker, experienced sleepless nights when Starbucks entered India, according to an article he wrote for Outlook magazine in 2016.

He had a "moment of misery" when the action of Coffee Days jumped to his debut, giving him "a boost for the ego," he wrote in the column. .

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