Karnataka HC stays CBI probe against KPCC chief DK Shivakumar
BNITIMES.COM Reported by bureau news Edited by Vishal Sharma Updated: February 10, 2023 10:50 pm IST
Karnataka Congress president D K Shivakumar is again in the crosshairs of investigative agencies, with Enforcement Directorate (ED) issuing a fresh notice to him and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) initiating a similar action against his daughter Aishwarya Shivakumar.
It is Shivakumar’s vast education empire that is now come under the radar of the agencies.
A few months earlier, CBI sleuths conducted searches on the educational institutions run by Shivakumar in connection with a disproportionate assets case in which he is under investigation.
Shivakumar serves as the chairman of the National Education Foundation (NEF), and his daughter D.K.S. Aishwarya is a management member. NEF runs multiple educational institutions, including the Global Academy of Technology, the National Hill View Public School(NHVPS) chain and Global Nursing College.
The ED is also investigating Shivakumar’s role in the National Herald corruption case in which Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi are the main accused and are currently out on bail.
Arrest In 2019
ED arrested the Kanakapura strongman in September 2019 following multiple rounds of questioning in a case that emerged from an Income Tax Department investigation against him over charges of tax evasion and hawala transactions running to crores.
The arrest was based on investigations following Income Tax searches carried out in August 2017 at 70 premises linked to him. The investigations partially pertained to the period when Sivakumar was the energy minister in the Congress government in Karnataka. He was lodged in Tihar Jail for over a month. Delhi high court granted him bail a month later.
In May 2022, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed a chargesheet against Shivakumar in a Delhi court nearly three years after the central agency arrested him in a money-laundering case.
Shivakumar and his family members have been previously accused and even chargesheeted in multiple cases of illegal mining and transporting granite illegally and improper land distribution.
In 2015, the Karnataka high court issued notices to Shivakumar and his family for their alleged role in illegal mining activities in Karnataka’s Kanakapura and Ramanagara districts. Shivakumar and his brother DK Suresh have also been accused of grabbing 66 acres of land meant for the Dalits and poor.
Shivakumar’s Business Empire
Despite the notoriety he has gained in over three decades of political career in the state and common knowledge that he has amassed enormous wealth, Shivakumar continues to hold sway in the Congress party and is viewed as critical to the revival of party’s fortunes in the state.
A one-time protege of notorious gangster Kotwal Ramachandra, both BJP and JD(S) often invoke his unsavoury past, most recently when he was seen slapping a party worker in public glare.
As someone from a very modest background who used to run a tent cinema and distribute milk in his native place, Shivakumar has now built a formidable business empire ranging from granite quarries to iron ore export to land parcel facilitation service for big builders to education to luxury hospitality to real estate firms through proxies to transport companies.
A cursory glance at Shivakumar’s election-eve affidavits over the year will provide information on various transactions he has entered with leading real estate firms in Bengaluru. Sobha Developers, Puravankara, Davanam Constructions, and Shriram properties are names mentioned for their close links to the Congress leader.
For instance, in 2022, Sobha Developers settled a Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices (PFUTP) case with SEBI by paying ₹2.925 crores. The company was deemed to have carried out certain transactions with Shivakumar and his family members/associates that were against the interest of the minority shareholders of Sobha.
Shivakumar was also investigated over allegations of benami ownership of Sharma Transport, founded initially by late Congressman Dhanraj Parasmal Sharma. The company runs a fleet of luxury cum passenger buses and provides transport services to various concerns/individuals on a rental basis. Incidentally Sunil Kumar Sharma, Dhanraj Parasmal Sharma’s grandson who currently runs the transport company, was included as accused no. 3 in Income Tax’s money laundering and benami transaction case against the Congress leader.
Shivakumar, who modestly described himself as an “educationist and social worker” in the election affidavit he filed in 2018 as Congress candidate from the Kanakapura assembly seat, officially declared a personal wealth of Rs 619.79 crore – an increase of 188% since the 2013 elections when he had declared Rs 215.06 crore against his name.
His wife, who described herself as a “housewife and landlord”, and his three dependent children declared a combined wealth of Rs 221.58 crore, a whopping increase of 472% since the last election.
His brother D K Suresh, currently a Lok Sabha member from the Bengaluru Rural seat, declared assets worth Rs 338 crores in 2019( up from Rs 85 crore declared in 2014).
The family’s fortune is likely to have further bolstered after his daughter Aishwarya tied the knot with Amartya Hegde, son of late Cafe Coffee Day founder VG Siddhartha and grandson of former Karnataka CM SM Krishna in 2021. Siddhartha reportedly committed suicide in July 2019 owing to financial distress. After being missing for two days, his body was retrieved from a river near Mangaluru.
