Alcohol, EU – Baltic States, Latvia, Legislation

The Dutch court also ordered SPI Group to pay Russian company Soyuzplodoimport  all its profits made from the Stoli, Stolichnaya and Moskovskaya brands there since 1999.

The Netherlands' supreme court dismissed SPI Group's appeal on procedural grounds, according to the Financial Times.

SPI Group said in a statement that it would explore "legal remedies at an EU level" and criticized the court for not allowing it to introduce evidence that it claimed had been "suppressed by our adversaries for many years". 

The legal dispute between Russia's state-owned Soyuzplodoimport  and SPI Group over the rights to the Stolichnaya, Stoli and Moskovskaya brands has been going on for years. 

Amber Beverages Group, the key shareholder of Latvia's leading alcohol producer Latvijas Balzams, is also a member of SPI Group.  

All rights to the brands once used to belong to Soyuzplodoimport, which in 1991 was turned into a stock company. Russian billionaire Yuri Shefler, who owns SPI, bought the trademarks in the 1990s from Soyuzplodoimport for USD 285,000.

In 2001, legal action began in Russia to dispute SPI Group’s international rights to these brands.

Soyuzplodoimport claims that its managers unlawfully privatized the company from 1990 to 1992, which means the company had no authority to sell the brands to Shefler.