Anant Kumar Hegde’s car rams into another vehicle; third mishap in three months

Bengaluru, Jan 3: Former Karnataka chief minister and Congress leader Siddaramaiah on Friday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said that 90 per cent of the promises made by him remain unfulfilled.

"He (Prime Minister Modi) had promised that in 2020 the economy will be doubled, but only their troubles have doubled. He just lied. 90 per cent of the promises made by Modi have remained unfulfilled," Siddaramaiah told media here.

Siddaramaiah's remarks come at a time when Prime Minister Modi is on a two-day visit to the state.

"In August, there was severe flood in state, he didn't visit Karnataka at that time. Flood situation was in 23 districts. Prime Minister will tweet for small issues. But at the time of severe flood he didn't even tweet. In 2009, Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister. He did aerial survey of the state and announced Rs 1500 crore relief on spot," Siddaramaiah said.

"This time the estimated damage due to flood is more than Rs 1 lakh crores," he said.

He went on to say, "Prime Minister came to witness Chandrayaan-2. He did not give time to Chief Minister and ministers and opposition party to meet him and discuss about floods."

"When I was the Chief Minister, the Prime Minister visited the state two times. Prime Minister had told at the time of inauguration of food park that there will be 10,000 direct employment and 25,000 employment. But nothing has happened till now," Siddaramaiah said.

Besides the Prime Minister, Siddaramaiah also criticised Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa.

"In last election, Prime Minister had told that, if BJP comes to power in Centre and state, there will be development. But nothing has happened. Chief Minister and ministers should have spoken to the Prime Minister about relief funds. The central government should have announced it as National disaster... That's why I called BS Yediyurappa as weak Chief Minister," Siddaramaiah said.

"He had said if BJP is in power at the centre and state, doors of fortune of the state will be opened. People trusted him and gave 25 seats in Lok Sabha elections. But now, he doesn't even open the doors of his house for his party leaders," he said.

Congress leader further cornered the Prime Minister over his address in Tumkuru Mutt on Thursday and said, "We admit Pakistan is an evil country. But what are you doing about minorities in our country? You are bringing law against the minorities. Is that right? And you give speech about these things in front of young children."

Prime Minister Modi is on a two-day visit to Karnataka and is attending several events as part of his official engagements.

Bengaluru, May 28: As many as 115 new coronavirus cases were reported in Karnataka on Thursday taking the infection count to 2,533, Karnataka Minister S Suresh said.

The total coronavirus cases include 834 discharges, 1,650 active cases, 47 deaths so far due to the disease and two deaths due non-COVID causes, Suresh Kumar, who is minister for primary and secondary education, said during the daily COVID-19 briefing.

According to him, 29 cases were reported in Udupi on Thursday, followed by 24 in Dakshina Kannada district, 13 in Hassan, 12 in Bidar, nine in Bengaluru Urban, seven in Yadagiri, six in Chitradurga, five in Kalaburagi, four in Haveri, three in Chikkamagaluru, two in Vijayapura and one in Raichur.

The minister said among the new cases, 95 are inter-state passengers and two international passengers.

According to the health department, 84 infected people have returned from Maharashtra and eight from Tamil Nadu.

Among those discharged today, 13 are in Davangere, 12 in Dakshina Kannada, nine each in Yadagiri and Vijayapura, five in Gadag, three in Belagavi, one each in Mysuru and Bagalkote.

Two are severe acute respiratory infection cases.

There were, however, no coronavirus related deaths in the state today, the minister said.

Kumar said the government has issued another circular making changes in the quarantine rules.

"A person who has completed seven days of institutional quarantine and is asymptomatic can be permitted for home quarantine without a COVID test, subject to undergoing medical check-up," the minister said.

According to the circular, all elderly people of above 60 years of age and those with comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma, heart ailment and renal diseases, are required to be clinically evaluated diligently prior to shifting them to home quarantine.

Such people will be under mandatory home quarantine for seven days, the circular read.

Feb 19: Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty was once a typical billionaire with a taste for the high-life.

He splurged on a private jet, vintage cars and two entire floors of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper. His website shows him hobnobbing with politicians, Bill Gates and Bollywood royalty.

“The thrill of speed and freedom makes me love cars,” Shetty, 77, told local reporters last year.

Shetty had more than enough money -- at least on paper -- to afford such a lifestyle from companies he helped found, including hospital operator NMC Health Plc and financial services firm Finablr Plc. On Dec. 10, his stakes in the public companies were valued at $2.4 billion, making up the bulk of a fortune spanning education, hospitality and one of the world’s oldest tea companies.

Then, a week later, Carson Block came along.

Block’s investment firm, Muddy Waters, issued a report criticizing NMC’s accounts and disclosing a short position. Since then, Muddy Waters’s scrutiny has snowballed into a troubling scenario for Shetty that sheds light on his complex share arrangements and casts doubts about his net worth. His holdings in Finablr and NMC are worth $885 million, but Shetty’s fortune may now be just a fraction of that, depending on the size of his borrowings.

Filings this month show that Shetty pledged a quarter of his NMC stake against loans with First Abu Dhabi Bank and Zurich-based Falcon Private Bank. Two other shareholders may own half of his reported stake. Another lender -- Al Salam Bank Bahrain -- has already sold some of those shares to enforce security over a loan for Shetty, and NMC said Tuesday that First Abu Dhabi Bank sold another chunk earlier this month.

The situation “seems to have gone beyond some of the issues that Muddy Waters focused on initially,“ said Gavin Launder, a fund manager at Legal & General Investment Management, who owned shares in NMC until October. “The increased scrutiny has unearthed other issues.”

Law firm Herbert Smith Freehills has launched a review of Shetty’s holdings at his request, a spokesperson for the Indian-born businessman said, declining to comment further until the analysis is completed. Shetty resigned Sunday as NMC’s chairman.

In its Dec. 17 report on NMC, Muddy Waters hinted at potential overpayment for assets, inflated cash balances and understated debt. Shares of the United Arab Emirates’ biggest private health-care provider have since plunged 67%, and the firm is now the focus of takeover speculation. The sell-off also spread to Finablr, whose stock has tumbled 64% in that span.

NMC has disputed Muddy Waters’s claims, and the company hired former FBI Director Louis Freeh to conduct an independent review of the short seller’s allegations. Meanwhile, local regulators “are making inquiries with the relevant parties,” a spokesperson for the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority said.

Shetty is hardly the only ultra-wealthy person to leverage his assets. Elon Musk has used his shares in Tesla Inc. to obtain personal loans, while Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison has put up millions of the company’s shares to fund a lavish lifestyle that includes trophy properties, America’s Cup teams and the Indian Wells tennis facility in California.

But such deals can also sour, as demonstrated by Shetty’s lenders selling shares his investment firm pledged. He and his advisers are investigating details of the sales as part of their legal review, according to filings.

To complicate matters, Shetty pledged another batch of NMC stock in 2018 as part of a so-called equity collar arrangement with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that uses options to limit the impact from share moves. Last month, he also pledged most of his stake in Finablr to refinance a loan from the company’s takeover of foreign-exchange firm Travelex for about $1.2 billion.

BRS Ventures Investment, the UAE-based holding company for most of Shetty’s assets, doesn’t report consolidated financials, preventing a complete analysis of his net worth. His other assets include a catering company, a waste-management firm and pharmaceutical business Neopharma, which four months ago was in the early stages of planning for an initial public offering.

Block, 43, earned his reputation as a short seller a decade ago through targeting U.S.-listed Chinese companies that he claimed were frauds. More recently, his San Francisco-based firm focused on British litigation-finance firm Burford Capital Ltd. and Japanese biotech stock PeptiDream Inc. Short sellers seek to benefit from a decline in a company’s share price.

Shetty founded NMC in 1975 after moving to Abu Dhabi from his native India. He created Finablr two years ago to consolidate his financial brands before listing it on the London Stock Exchange in 2019.

Block said he didn’t anticipate NMC’s shareholding drama.

“I wouldn’t have been able to predict that we’d get these bizarre disclosures about unclear share ownership coming out of the company,” he said in a Feb. 13 phone interview. “This has been obviously a more dramatic unraveling than we usually see.”