The billionaire owner of Cafe Coffee Day, VG Siddhartha went missing in Mangaluru on Monday night. Siddhartha, who is also the son-in-law of former Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna, got off his car near the Netravati River off Mangaluru and has been missing ever since.
In his last letter to the board and family of CCD, Siddhartha wrote, "My intention was never to cheat or mislead anybody, I have failed as an entrepreneur. This is my sincere submission, I hope someday you will understand, forgive and pardon me."
A massive search operation has been launched which the Chief Minister BS Yediyaruppa has been personally monitoring.
The company had run into losses of Rs 7,000 crore. Along with his letter, Siddhartha had attached a list of all the assests and liabilities of the company and asked everyone in the board to continue to run the company with a new management.
READ THE FULL TEXT HERE:
After 37 years with a strong commitment to hard work, having directly created 30.000 jobs in our
companies and the subsidiaries as well another 20,000 jobs in a technology company where have been a large shareholder since it's founding. I have failed to create the right profitable business model despite my best efforts.
I would like to say I gave it my all. I am very sorry to let down all the people that put their trust in me. I fought for a long time but today gave up as I could not take any more pressure from one of the private equity partners forcing me to buy back shares, a transaction I had partially completed six months ago by borrowing a large sum of money from a friend.
Tremendous pressure from other lenders leads to me succumbing to the situation. There was a lot of harassment from the previous DG Income tax in the form of attaching our shares on two separate occasions to block our Mindtree deal and then taking position of our Coffee Day shares, although the revised returns have been filed by us.
This was very unfair and has led to a serious liquidity crunch. I sincerely request each of you to be strong and to continue running these businesses with a new management.
I am solely responsible for all mistakes. Every financial transaction is my responsibility
My team, auditors and senior management are totally unaware of all my transactions. The law should hold me and only me accountable, as I have withheld this information from everybody including my family.
My intention was never to cheat or mislead anybody. I have failed as an entrepreneur. This is my sincere submission. I hope someday you will understand, forgive and pardon me.
I have enclosed a list of our assets and tentative value of each asset. Our assets outweigh our liabilities and can help repay everybody.
With ENS inputs