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https://time.com/5639883/indian-coffee-tycoon-body-found-river/
2019-07-31 11:51:19Z
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Rabu, 31 Juli 2019
Body of Missing Indian Coffee Shop Tycoon Found in River - TIME
https://time.com/5639883/indian-coffee-tycoon-body-found-river/
2019-07-31 11:51:19Z
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Body of India's coffee tycoon found floating in river by fishermen - Fox News
The body of V.G. Siddhartha, founder of India’s largest coffee chain, was found floating in a river Wednesday, two days after he was first reported missing.
Siddhartha, 60, was last seen by his driver Monday evening near a bridge in Dakshina Kannada district. He reportedly asked him to wait while he went for a walk along the bridge. After not hearing from the coffee tycoon for two hours, the driver contacted police.
His body was found by fishermen on Wednesday.
“I saw a body floating while I was fishing and then I informed the police. I participated in the rescue operation,” one of the men told the New Delhi Television news channel.
National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel carry the body of missing Indian coffee tycoon V.G. Siddhartha from the banks of Netravati river towards an ambulance after local fishermen found it floating in the coastal city of Mangalore in the southern state of Karnataka on July 31, 2019. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
An autopsy report will be conducted to confirm the official cause of death.
Police are continuing to investigate the circumstances around the Cafe Coffee Day founder’s death. Several days before his disappearance, Siddhartha sent a letter to employees that appeared to allude to mounting financial problems.
RISING INDIAN CRICKET STAR SAYS DOPING VIOLATION WAS OVER PROHIBITED SUBSTANCE IN COUGH MEDICINE
FILE PHOTO: V.G. Siddhartha, chairman of Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd, speaks during a news conference in Mumbai, India, October 7, 2015. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/File Photo - RC16E01454B0
“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,” the letter, obtained by the Times of India, read. “I fought for a long time but today I 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.”
He continued: “Tremendous pressure from other lenders nod to me succumbing to the situation.”
Siddhartha went on to say that he was “solely responsible for all mistakes” and that the company’s auditors and senior management were “totally unaware of all my transactions.”
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“The law should hold me and only me accountable, as I have withheld this information from everybody including my family," he said.
The body of missing Indian coffee tycoon V.G. Siddhartha is wheeled on a stretcher from an ambulance to a cold storage unit after local fishermen found it floating in the Netravati river in the coastal city of Mangalore in the southern state of Karnataka on July 31, 2019. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Cafe Coffee Day was founded in 1996 and now has 1,750 locations throughout India, making it the largest coffee producer in the country, according to the Business Standard. It has also opened locations in Europe as well as in Malaysia and Nepal.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/body-of-indias-coffee-tycoon-found-floating-in-river-by-fishermen
2019-07-31 10:50:11Z
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India’s ‘Coffee King’ Found Dead Amid Financial Troubles - The New York Times
NEW DELHI — V.G. Siddhartha, a wealthy tycoon who beat Starbucks to dominate India’s retail coffee industry but faced personal financial troubles, was found dead on Wednesday, the police said.
The police had carried out an exhaustive search for Mr. Siddhartha, founder of the popular chain Cafe Coffee Day, who was last seen Monday evening on a waterfront bridge outside the coastal city of Mangaluru, in southern India. Fishermen spotted his body floating near the shoreline on Wednesday morning.
Hanumantharaya, a senior police official who goes by one name, said the police were still investigating the cause of death.
Mr. Siddhartha, whose family has been in the coffee business for 130 years, became one of the world’s biggest traders after opening Cafe Coffee Day in 1996, earning him the nickname “the coffee king of India.” The company and its subsidiaries, which recently expanded to other countries in Asia and Europe, employ more than 30,000 people.
But Cafe Coffee Day and its parent organization, Coffee Day Enterprises, were thrown into turmoil in 2017, when the Indian tax authorities raided company offices. They said they had found undisclosed transactions and illegal income, which Mr. Siddhartha denied.
This year, the company’s stock took another hit as Mr. Siddhartha struggled to pay various lenders, leading to a liquidity crunch.
Mr. Siddhartha, his wife, Malavika Hegde, and companies affiliated with them held over 50 percent of the equity in Coffee Day Enterprises.
On Tuesday, the company released a copy of a letter, purportedly written by Mr. Siddhartha, that was addressed to the board of directors. The letter, which appears on Mr. Siddhartha’s letterhead and bears his signature, said that he was facing “a lot of harassment” from the tax authorities, and that he took responsibility for “all mistakes.”
“The law should hold me and only me accountable,” the letter says. “My intention was never to cheat or mislead anybody. I have failed as an entrepreneur.”
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Business owners in India have long had a tense relationship with the tax authorities. High-profile cases of corruption and fraud by tycoons have engendered public distrust toward entrepreneurs. But critics say that in the name of getting tough on cheats, the authorities sometimes resort to harassment to collect on tax demands, including from honest citizens.
The result is frustration on all sides. The government struggles to collect the tax revenue it needs to fund social programs and build roads and power lines. Businesses struggle to comply with vague tax rules and burdensome enforcement practices. And multinational companies shy away from investing in India, fearful of becoming embroiled in lengthy disputes.
The country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has for years promised to untangle the knot. Campaigning for election ahead of his first term in office in 2014, Mr. Modi’s party inveighed against the “tax terrorism” that it said had soured India’s image in the eyes of big foreign companies.
Since taking power, the Modi government has enacted a national value-added tax that was meant to ease the compliance burden for businesses. Mr. Modi’s surprise decision in 2016 to cancel high-denomination currency notes was intended to force tax dodgers to turn over the cash they had squirreled away to avoid taxes.
But many of the root problems remain, even as institutions such as the World Bank have acknowledged the steps India has taken to make it easier to do business.
The police said that Mr. Siddhartha, who was in his late 50s or early 60s, had told his family he was going to a holiday resort on Monday. But he then asked his driver to take him to Mangaluru, about 200 miles from the company’s headquarters in Bangalore.
As evening set in, Mr. Siddhartha asked the driver to stop near the 30-foot Netravati River bridge outside the city, saying he wanted to walk.
According to local news reports, Mr. Siddhartha asked the driver to meet him on the other side of the bridge and then got on a call. When Mr. Siddhartha did not show up or answer his phone, which was switched off, the driver filed a police report.
After Mr. Siddhartha’s body was recovered, shares in Coffee Day Enterprises fell nearly 20 percent. Calls to the company’s headquarters in Bangalore were not answered on Wednesday, and its stores were ordered closed for the day.
In a statement on Tuesday, Sadananda Poojary, the company secretary and compliance officer, said that Coffee Day Enterprises was cooperating with the Indian authorities and that the company was “professionally managed and led by competent leadership.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/india-vg-siddhartha-dead-cafe-coffee-day.html
2019-07-31 10:26:53Z
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The body of Indian coffee tycoon V.G. Siddhartha has been found - CNN
Police in the coastal city of Mangalore confirmed on Wednesday that they had recovered the body of V.G. Siddhartha, founder and chairman of India's biggest coffee chain, Café Coffee Day.
In a letter purportedly written and signed by Siddhartha, which the chain's parent company Coffee Day Enterprises released on Tuesday evening, the coffee tycoon said he was facing "tremendous pressure" from lenders that led to him "succumbing to the situation." The letter was dated July 27.
"I would like to say I gave it my all," the letter says. "I am very sorry to let down all the people that put their trust in me."
Siddhartha had "not been reachable" since Monday evening, Coffee Day Enterprises said in a statement earlier Tuesday. He is believed to have disappeared from a bridge over the Netravati river, where he got out of his car to take a walk, Mangalore police commissioner Sandeep Patil told CNN Business.
Siddhartha founded Coffee Day in 1993, and opened the first Café Coffee Day in the southern Indian city of Bangalore three years later. The company has since grown into India's biggest coffee chain, with over 1,700 outlets across 245 Indian cities as of last year. By comparison, global rival Starbucks (SBUX) currently has 146 outlets in India.
In the letter, Siddhartha urged Coffee Day to continue running the business with new management.
"I am solely responsible for all mistakes. Every financial transaction is my responsibility," he wrote.
Shares in Coffee Day Enterprises fell by the maximum daily limit of 20% for a second consecutive day on Wednesday, hitting a new all-time low.
Siddhartha owned 33% of Coffee Day Enterprises, according to a stock exchange filing last month, while his wife and family-owned entities hold another 21%. The company went public in 2015.
Coffee Day also has retail outlets in Austria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Malaysia and Nepal, and exports coffee to several markets including North America, Europe and the Middle East.
In the letter, Siddhartha listed the coffee chain as well as several other assets — including stakes in multiple tech companies and logistics firm Sical — that he said "can help repay everybody."
"My intention was never to cheat or mislead anybody, I have failed as an entrepreneur," he added. "I hope someday you will understand, forgive and pardon me."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/31/business/ccd-founder-body-found-siddhartha/index.html
2019-07-31 08:06:00Z
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Sign of the times: China's capital orders Arabic, Muslim symbols taken down - Reuters
BEIJING (Reuters) - Authorities in the Chinese capital have ordered halal restaurants and food stalls to remove Arabic script and symbols associated with Islam from their signs, part of an expanding national effort to “Sinicize” its Muslim population.
The Arabic script on the signboard of a halal food store is seen covered, at Niujie area in Beijing, China, July 19, 2019. Picture taken July 19, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer
Employees at 11 restaurants and shops in Beijing selling halal products and visited by Reuters in recent days said officials had told them to remove images associated with Islam, such as the crescent moon and the word “halal” written in Arabic, from signs.
Government workers from various offices told one manager of a Beijing noodle shop to cover up the “halal” in Arabic on his shop’s sign, and then watched him do it.
“They said this is foreign culture and you should use more Chinese culture,” said the manager, who, like all restaurant owners and employees who spoke to Reuters, declined to give his name due to the sensitivity of the issue.
The campaign against Arabic script and Islamic images marks a new phase of a drive that has gained momentum since 2016, aimed at ensuring religions conform with mainstream Chinese culture.
The campaign has included the removal of Middle Eastern-style domes on many mosques around the country in favor of Chinese-style pagodas.
China, home to 20 million Muslims, officially guarantees freedom of religion, but the government has campaigned to bring the faithful into line with Communist Party ideology.
It’s not just Muslims who have come under scrutiny. Authorities have shut down many underground Christian churches, and torn down crosses of some churches deemed illegal by the government.
But Muslims have come in for particular attention since a riot in 2009 between mostly Muslim Uighur people and majority Han Chinese in the far western region of Xinjiang, home to the Uighur minority.
Spasms of ethnic violence followed, and some Uighurs, chafing at government controls, carried out knife and crude bomb attacks in public areas and against the police and other authorities.
In response, China launched what it described as a crackdown on terrorism in Xinjiang.
Now, it is facing intense criticism from Western nations and rights groups over its policies, in particular mass detentions and surveillance of Uighurs and other Muslims there.
The government says its actions in Xinjiang are necessary to stamp out religious extremism. Officials have warned about creeping Islamisation, and have extended tighter controls over other Muslim minorities.
‘NEW NORMAL’
Analysts say the ruling Communist Party is concerned that foreign influences can make religious groups difficult to control.
“Arabic is seen as a foreign language and knowledge of it is now seen as something outside of the control of the state,” said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Washington who studies Xinjiang.
“It is also seen as connected to international forms of piety, or in the eyes of state authorities, religious extremism. They want Islam in China to operate primarily through Chinese language,” he said.
Kelly Hammond, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas who studies Muslims of the Hui minority in China, said the measures were part of a “drive to create a new normal”.
Beijing is home to at least 1,000 halal shops and restaurants, according to the Meituan Dianping food delivery app, spread across the city’s historic Muslim quarter as well as in other neighborhoods.
It was not clear if every such restaurant in Beijing has been told to cover Arabic script and Muslim symbols. One manager at a restaurant still displaying Arabic said he’d been ordered to remove it but was waiting for his new signs.
Several bigger shops visited by Reuters replaced their signs with the Chinese term for halal - “qing zhen” - while others merely covered up the Arabic and Islamic imagery with tape or stickers.
The Beijing government’s Committee on Ethnicity and Religious affairs declined to comment, saying the order regarding halal restaurants was a national directive.
The National Ethnic Affairs Commission did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
While most shopkeepers interviewed by Reuters said they did not mind replacing their signs, some said it confused their customers and an employee at a halal butcher shop accused authorities of “erasing” Muslim culture.
“They are always talking about national unity, they’re always talking about China being international. Is this national unity?”
Reporting by Huizhong Wu; Additional reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Se Young Lee and Tony Munroe
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-religion-islam/sign-of-the-times-chinas-capital-orders-arabic-muslim-symbols-taken-down-idUSKCN1UQ0JF
2019-07-31 05:56:00Z
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Selasa, 30 Juli 2019
Murder in Italy: Rome police say officers "attacked immediately" by American teens Finnegan Lee Elder and Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth - CBS News
Last Updated Jul 30, 2019 7:47 AM EDT
Rome -- A commander of Italy's Carabinieri police force said Tuesday that two American teens accused of murdering an Italian officer set upon the officer and his partner as soon as they approached the pair and identified themselves as law enforcement. Finnegan Lee Elder and Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth are facing charges of murder and extortion in the stabbing death of Mario Cerciello Rega. The murder charges carry possible life prison sentences.
Providing further detail of the events that unfolded in the Friday killing last week, Carabinieri Commander Francesco Gargano said officers Mario Cerciello Rega and Andrea Varriale "were attacked immediately" by the two Americans.
"They did not have the possibility to use weapons and react," Gargano said, adding that the officers were attacked as soon as they identified themselves as Carabinieri police officers. That claim contradicts the Americans' own accounts to investigators. They say they didn't know the two officers were police, as they were in plain clothes.
CBS News correspondent Seth Doane reports the suspects were visited in a Rome prison by U.S. Embassy officials on Monday.
Documents released on Monday, in which investigating judge Chiara Gallo explains her decision to allow the continued detention of the pair, provided context of the fatal encounter. The document revealed that the teenagers had been drinking alcohol and that the judge believed they had shown a "total absence of self-control and critical capacity." She said they had "demonstrated an excessive immaturity."
Surveillance video shown by Italian media, though not independently confirmed, purportedly shows the teenagers at the scene in Rome where they allegedly tried to buy about $90 worth of cocaine just before midnight last Friday. They are seen fleeing with a bag they stole after the drug deal went wrong.
An eyewitness said he saw them running away from the scene.
Two plainclothes officers from the Carabinieiri police force were called, including Mario Cerciello Rega, whom Elder has admitted to stabbing. He claims it was self-defense because he believed he was being strangled.
In the court documents released on Monday, however, judge Gallo noted that there were no signs of strangulation found on Elder, and said the multiple stab wounds inflicted on the officer were not indicative of "legitimate defense."
The teens also told interrogators they hadn't realized they were fighting police officers, but Gallo dismissed that as "impossible," saying the officers had identified themselves repeatedly verbally, and shown their badges.
Natale-Hjorth claimed during questioning that he did not know about the stabbing until after he and Elder had returned to their hotel room and had a nap. The teens have offered contradictory accounts as to who hid the murder weapon behind a ceiling panel in their hotel room.
A photo that surfaced of Natale-Hjorth blindfolded in police custody sparked cries of mistreatment earlier this week, especially as it emerged shortly after the police said he had confessed to involvement in the killing.
Italian officials were quick to call the blindfolding of the suspect a mistake by a single officer, who had been moved to a different post amid an investigation into their actions.
On Tuesday, Rome prosecutor Michele Prestipino said stressed that the suspects were questioned by magistrates in a lawful manner, in the presence of lawyers and an interpreter. He said the questioning was recorded.
Prestipino said investigations were still underway to determine why Natale-Hjorth was blindfolded.
© 2019 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/murder-in-italy-rome-police-say-officers-attacked-immediately-american-teens-2019-07-30/
2019-07-30 11:39:00Z
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Americans Jailed for Stabbing Italian Cop Turn on Each Other - The Daily Beast
ROME, Italy—When 19-year-old Finnegan Elder and 18-year-old Gabe Natale Hjorth were first met by two undercover police officers with Italy’s military Carabinieri police force on a dark street near the Vatican in Rome, they thought they were about to get jumped.
According to a 14-page document from the investigating judge, which was reviewed by The Daily Beast, the two Americans had earlier approached Sergio Brugiatelli, a layabout who can always be found on Piazza Mastei in Rome's Trastevere district, for cocaine. Brugiatelli pointed them to a pusher.
The Americans allegedly thought they were buying cocaine, but when their €100 purchase ended up being crushed aspirin, they returned and stole Brugiatelli's backpack in revenge. Brugiatelli called his phone, which rang from inside the stolen backpack, and they set up a plan to meet and exchange the bag for €100 and a gram of cocaine.
The document states that Elder’s and Natale Hjorth’s stories sync about the drug deal, the stolen backpack, and the plan to meet Brugiatelli. Then, things diverge.
Natale Hjorth, who is a dual American-Italian citizen, though he has never lived in Italy, says he had no idea Elder was carrying a knife when they went to meet who they thought would be Brugiatelli. But Elder says they had both agreed to take it with them "just in case."
Police say that given the size of the weapon they doubt that Natale Hjorth could have missed the fact his friend had it on him. Elder also accuses his friend of finding the drug connection based on friends he knows from Natale Hjorth’s summers visiting his grandfather in Italy. Natale Hjorth instead claims the drug buy was all his friend’s idea.
After the Americans stole the backpack and arrived at the meeting place, just half a block from the hotel near the Vatican where they were staying, they were met by Mario Cerciello Rega and Andrea Varriale, two undercover police officers with Italy's elite military Carabinieri who were both unarmed and without backup.
The Americans tell police they thought Brugiatelli sent someone to beat them up, so a scuffle broke out and Rega ended up dead from 11 stab wounds, allegedly from Elder’s military grade trench knife that he brought with him from the U.S. Police have confirmed to The Daily Beast that when Elder was shown the murder weapon, he allegedly said it was his.
Rega was fatally stabbed, allegedly by Elder, and Varriale suffered minor wounds, allegedly inflicted by Natale Hjorth. The two were arrested in their hotel room on Friday, after police say they found the hidden weapon and their bloody clothes behind a ceiling tile.
According to the investigating judge's report, Varriale says that he and his partner identified themselves as "carabinieri," a term for military police in civil law enforcement, or gendarmes, that it is unlikely either American understood. Elder told police that the plainclothes men did not show a badge, and that he had no idea they were cops. The police were also unarmed and did not have back-up, which has raised eyebrows in Rome and questions about whether the cops were on official duty or not.
Elder says Rega put his hands on his neck, and he acted in self defense, fearful he was about to be attacked.
Varriale says the last words his partner said were, “Help! They are killing me.” He died a short time later in the emergency room.
“The Americans tell police they thought Brugiatelli sent someone to beat them up, so a scuffle broke out and Rega ended up dead from 11 stab wounds.”
Photos leaked to Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera show Natale Hjorth blindfolded in police custody, which is against Italian law. The local police have opened an internal investigation not only into why the young American was blindfolded, but who leaked the photo. Preliminary reports from that internal investigation are that nothing improper happened and that the officer who placed the blindfold on Natale Hjorth has been reassigned. It is yet unclear who took the photo.
But new information reported late Monday in Rome suggests that while the heinous crime is inexcusable, there are extenuating factors. Brugiatelli, it is now known, called the police about his stolen bag an hour after he had already met Varriale in Piazza Mastei. In audio of the emergency call, heard by The Daily Beast, Brugiatelli does not identify the alleged thieves at all, neither to call them foreigners, nor to say they were not Italian speakers, nor to describe what they were wearing. The police instead are thought to have sent high-level officers to the scene, which is curious indeed, since the standard practice for stolen personal items is to go to the nearest police office to file a report in person.
Nonetheless, the two undercover officers arrived at the meeting point with the Americans to get Brugiatelli's bag back. Carabinieri officials did not answer a Daily Beast question about proof that they were dispatched officially. A number of sources have suggested to The Daily Beast that Brugiatelli was perhaps a police informant and the officers may have said they would rough up the Americans to get the bag back as a favor.
Elder’s mother, Leah Elder, has spoken to The Daily Beast by phone. Most of what she has shared to date is off the record, but she did say she is concerned that her son is not getting the medical attention he needs. He was on prescription Xanax, and police say the medication was found in his room.
“His funeral was held in the same church where he was married just 40 days earlier.”
Elder also says her son was denied access to U.S. consulate officials for the first 48 hours and given a court-appointed lawyer who did not speak English, possibly hindering his defense. One might not be surprised at such treatment of suspects thought to be cop killers, though such treatment is illegal.
Late Monday, the Elder family confirmed to The Daily Beast that their son had finally been able to talk to American officials who are now working to change their son's lawyer to one selected by his family. They also say he is finally getting medical care.
Meanwhile Emiliano Sisinni, the lawyer for Natale Hjorth, issued his own statement, accusing the police of maltreatment for the blindfolding of his client. “I can only express strong regret and concern, both as a lawyer and as a citizen, about what occurred in the Carabinieri barracks to the detriment of my client,” he said, setting up an obvious defense for a coerced confession. “That a suspect is subjected to such treatment in the phase preceding the interrogation must seriously reflect on the implications that this could have on the free self-determination of a suspect in making statements.”
He also goes on to say that his client cannot be blamed for the actions of his friend. “As noted during his interrogation Mr. Natale has clarified his position, which is completely extraneous to the unpredictable conduct of others which led to the death of a servant of the state.”
On Monday, Rega was laid to rest in the town of Somma Vesuviana on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius near Naples. His funeral was held in the same church where he was married just 40 days earlier. The same people who came to the church to celebrate his wedding were there on Monday to bid their final farewell.
Matteo Salvini, Italy's interior minister and head of the country's security forces, has called for life sentences and hard labor for the Americans. He said that the photo of the blindfolded suspect should not be a distraction and that the only victim is Rega. When Salvini left the church behind Rega's flower-laden coffin, townspeople chanted “Justice for Mario” in support.
Elder’s mother says her son had been on a European holiday in Germany and Spain before flying to Rome to catch up with his high-school friend Natale Hjorth, who was visiting his paternal grandfather in the city of Fiumicino near Rome. The two came to Rome for a few days of fun. But they may end up staying the rest of their lives.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/americans-finnegan-elder-and-gabe-natale-hjorth-jailed-for-stabbing-italian-cop-turn-on-each-other
2019-07-30 11:31:00Z
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