Bengaluru: The Directorate of Income Tax (Investigation) Karnataka & Goa on Thursday raided the sprawling business ‘empire’ of business tycoon V.G. Siddhartha in Bengaluru, Hassan, Mumbai, Chennai and Chikmagaluru for alleged tax evasion and concealment of taxable wealth. Siddhartha is the son-in-law of former Karnataka chief minister and newly inducted BJP leader - S.M. Krishna.
According to sources, the DGIT officials conducted multiple search and seizure operations at 25 locations in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, where Siddhartha has business investments including several Coffee Café Day (CCD) outlets, Serai the chain of luxury resorts in Chikmagaluru, Kabini, Bandipur and Ooty, a tech park and Way2Wealth consultancy firm in Bengaluru. CCD has its global office in Mudigere Road in Chikmagaluru and curing centre on Belur Road in Hassan.
The search operations took off Thursday morning from the CCD headquarters in UB City.
Siddhartha founded CCD with its first café on Brigade Road in Bengaluru in 1996. Today the chain with 1530 outlets in 29 states in India claims to have the largest footprint of coffee cafes in the country. He had founded Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company Limited in 1992 and has been its Chairman and Managing Director since January 2015.
A first generation entrepreneur Siddhartha and his family own 10,000 acres of coffee plantations in Chikamagaluru.
While the search and seizure operations continued through the day, there was no official statement from the I-T sleuths on the raids. The DGIT had created a political storm in Karnataka after they had more than 60 locations of the Energy Minister D.K. Shivakumar and his family members in the State and Delhi last month and unearthed Rs 300 crore of undeclared income from his and family premises during the three day search and seizure operations. Out of the Rs 300 crore, over Rs 100 crore is said to belong to the minister and his kin. On August 30 the Directorate had conducted search and seizure operations in over 10 locations in Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai, which are reportedly linked to Vijay Mulgund, a Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) member and a close associate of Shivakumar for alleged tax evasion, unaccounted wealth and assets.
