VG Siddhartha, SM Krishna’s son-in-law, faces tax heat: Raids at CCD offices and other properties

The main location of the raids is said to be at the CCD office in Vittal Mallya Road in Bengaluru.

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Income Tax officials raided several properties belonging to former Karnataka CM SM Krishna’s son-in-law VG Siddharatha on Thursday morning. According to initial reports, raids were conducted in at least 20 locations in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai and Chikmagalur.

Reports state that several properties that belong to Siddhartha, including offices of Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company – which owns the Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) franchise, Serai Estates and Global Village are being investigated.

I-T officials first arrived at the Cafe Coffee Day outlet on Vittal Mallya Road in Bengaluru in eight Innova cars and started sifting through documents at the outlet. The outlet also houses Siddhartha’s office.

The main location of the raids is said to be at the CCD office in Vittal Mallaya Road.

Siddhartha, son of a coffee estate owner, is the proprietor of CCD, which was launched 21 years ago. According to an Economic Times story in 2015, CCD has 1,550 stores, around 31,000 vending machines and 12,000 corporate accounts. It has outlets in many international locations including outlets in Prague, Vienna and Kuala Lumpur

According to a Forbes report, VG Siddhartha is worth more than 1.15 billion dollars and has shares in tech company Mindtree and few companies in the hospitality sector.

According to his profile on MindTree, his family has been in the coffee growing business for more than 130 years. The Coffee Day Group has interests in coffee retailing, logistics, technology parks (SEZ and STP scheme), financial services and investments in technology and software companies.

Earlier this year in March, Congress veteran SM Krishna joined the BJP. Meeting BJP National President Amit Shah, Minister Ananth Kumar and others in Delhi, Krishna formally joined the party on March 22, close to two months after he quit the Congress.

Krishna’s decision to quit the grand old party on January 29 came as a surprise to many. After all, he had been a Congress loyalist for 46 years. Krishna came into politics with the Praja Socialist Party, winning the Maddur Assembly seat in 1962. However, he soon joined the Congress (I) led by Indira Gandhi, contesting the 1971 parliamentary elections.