Siddhartha Hegde, the founder of Indian café chain Café Coffee Day (CCD) and son in law of former Union Minister and Chief Minister of Karnataka, SM Krishna, has been found dead in a river. Siddhartha Hegde was an energetic entrepreneur who built a multinational company with more than 4,000 crore rupees turnover out of scratches. But his company was in huge debt and he was not able to pay back to the private equity investors.
There has been huge furor of tax terrorism by the left-liberal establishment on the suicide of the CCD founder. “If VG Siddhartha letter is genuine (yet to be verified), then it only confirms what bizmem have been saying for a while now: tax terrorism is taking us back to the past, retarding investment/growth. And if this can happen to the son in law of SM Krishna, god help small bizmen,” tweeted India Today anchor Rajdeep Sardesai.
Another member of the left-liberal cabal made similar claims of tax terrorism. “VG Siddhartha is a hard-working, understated & cheerful entrepreneur. Let’s hope he’s ok & wish SM Krishna family the best. India’s entrepreneurial climate, however, is turning toxic by the day, with tax terror & over-criminalisation added to an economic collapse we keep denying,” tweeted ThePrint founder Shekhar Gupta who came to limelight after fake coup story.
These people from left-liberal media establishment who has gone full on after the government since the death of Siddhartha, would have accused the government if he had flown out of the country. As witnessed earlier, the businessperson like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi flew out of the country after their companies accumulated huge debt.
These offenders accumulated debt in the name of company as well as in personal capacity. After it became clear that they would not be able to repay the debt as the business was generating enough income, they flew out of country. The total NPA of the country is around 9 lakh crore rupees and the honest taxpayer’s are paid for the luxuries these crooked businessperson.
Modi government took a series of steps to ensure that the corrupt businessperson could not flew out of the country and delay the court cases. The government passed Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill under which the law enforcement agencies could seize the properties of such defaulters and use them to compensate the debt.
The ED would only need the approval of the special Prevention of Money Laundering (PMLA) courts in order to move to seize such properties. Once the ED has sought the court’s approval to grant them fugitive status, no other courts in the country would be authorized to entertain any pleas in relation to the case or the attached properties formerly belonging to the accused economic offenders.
The government also empowered the financial law enforcement agencies such as Enforcement Directorate (ED), Serious Fraud Investigation office (SFIO), and Income Tax Department. Earlier most of these cases used to be referred to CBI which is very politicized institution and therefore quick resolution of such cases was a distant dream.
The government also signed up agreement with G-20 countries and some tax heaven countries for cooperation against economic offenders. In last few months, many people have extradited from around the globe to be answerable to India authorities.
There is strong vigilance against the prospective defaulters who could fly out of country since last few years. Naresh Goyal, the executive of SpiceJet whose company defaulted on loans was ready to fly out of the country, but he was stopped at airport.
Essentially, stronger vigilance and proper law enforcement has left no room for the fugitive economic offenders to hide. People like Vijay Mallya have taken thousands of crore of loan from public sector bank with the intention to never pay back and then flew out of the country. This is no longer possible in ‘New India’ which Modi government is trying to make a law abiding society.