The Tambov District Court of the Tambov Region, at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office, nationalized the assets of businessman Yuri Shefler, who produces alcohol. This was reported on the court’s website.
According to Interfax, the Prosecutor General’s Office demanded that Shefler and his foreign legal entities be recognized as an “extremist association” due to the fact that he “encourages shelling of Russian regions by the Ukrainian army,” and his companies “finance the Ukrainian fund, which directs funds to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
Shefler’s assets in Russia were nationalized, and previously they were seized.
The Luxembourg company Amber Beverage Group Holdings, of which Scheffler is the beneficiary, owns 72.9% of the Amber Talvis distillery in the suburbs of Tambov, in the working-class village of Novaya Lyada. Another 25.5% belongs to Rosspirtprom. As RBC notes, the plant supplies alcohol to Shefler's alcohol holding SPI Group, which produces Riga balsam and vodka under the Stoli and Moskovskaya brands in Latvia.
Shefler also owns a plant in Kaliningrad that has not been operating since 2012.
The businessman became famous for purchasing the rights to the Stolichnaya and Moskovskaya vodka brands. In 1997, he became president of the state-owned Soyuzplodoimport company, which owned Soviet vodka brands, created his own company with an almost identical name, and sold it the rights to the names for 300 thousand euros. The Accounts Chamber recognized the cost as understated, and the arbitration court recognized the state's right to these brands.
Shefler and the Russian authorities have repeatedly sued in foreign courts over the right to use the brand in Western markets.
As Kommersant notes, the Prosecutor General's Office has used a similar practice — recognizing as an «extremist association» and seizing property under an administrative claim — several times already, starting in late 2023. Thus, according to this scheme, in July 2024, plots and other property were nationalized from the family of Alexander and Lidiya Nevzorov.
Several confectionery factories «Konti-Rus» were seized in Kursk, which also belonged to Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov and former Prime Minister of Ukraine Boris Kolesnikov. In Lipetsk, a confectionery factory of the Roshen company of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was seized. In Adygea, the gas production company «Yuzhgazenerdzhi» of Ukrainian businessman Igor Kolomoisky was nationalized.