London | Financial Times
Russian billionaire Yuri Schefler has been competing with the Russian government for the rights to the Stolichnaya vodka brand for two decades. Now another long legal battle has put Shefler in the newspaper headlines and at the center of a dispute between actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
The businessman, exiled from Russia, is fighting with Pitt for control of Château Miraval, a winery in Provence, France, which the actor bought with his exwife in 2008.
The billionaire, who made a fortune from his alcohol empire, provoked the Hollywood star’s ire when he bought Jolie’s shares for $64 million in 2021, becoming embroiled in the couple’s controversial split.
The actors discovered the picturesque 17thcentury Provençal castle while flying through southern France by “helicopter” looking for a European property to buy.
The castle and its 30 hectares of vineyards proved to be a wise investment. Miraval, available in a wide bottle, rode the rosé wine wave, with global consumption increasing 40% between 2002 and 2018.
LVMH, owner of the fashion house Louis Vuitton, acquired not one but two “prestigious” rosé wineries in the region: Château d’Esclans, maker of Whispering Angel, and Château Minuty. Celebrities like singers Post Malone, Kylie Minogue and Jon Bon Jovi also jumped on the bandwagon.
With the help of famous Rhône wine producer Marc Perrin, Pitt and Jolie founded the brand, which, according to court documents, made a profit of more than 15 million euros (around R$77.85 billion at current prices) in 2022.
In court, the actor questions whether his exwife had the right to sell her share without consulting him, as Pitt claims he had a preferential right to sell.
Jolie accuses Pitt of spending “pointlessly like a petulant child.”
Jolie responded to the accusation, explaining that she had offered to negotiate with the actor over her share of the winery, but the negotiations fell through after Pitt inserted a clause that prevented her from speaking publicly about the reasons behind the decision separation and forced her to look for another buyer. .
The actress also stated that her exhusband spent millions of dollars renovating the pool and a recording studio. According to the company managing the deal, Pitt and his partners owe more than $350 million. Lawyers claim Pitt acted like a “petulant child” while making a “brazen attempt to make money.”
Jolie’s defense claims the actor “wasted the company’s assets, spending millions on wasted projects, including more than $1 million on pool renovations, building and rebuilding a staircase four times, and millions on restoring a recording studio.”
The star also reportedly spent “almost €1 million a year on constantly rebuilding stone walls using stonemasons from Croatia” and around €3 million on unspecified expenses such as “clothing work.”
At the same time, Shefler’s company Stoli Group claims to have been excluded from the Miraval dispute by the actor. The billionaire, who left Russia in 2002 and lives in Switzerland, accuses Pitt’s team of launching a “xenophobic and false smear campaign worthy of Putin himself,” the lawsuit says.
The American actor’s lawyers accused the Stoli Group and Jolie of forcing Pitt to partner with “an outsider with toxic associations and intentions” and argued that Shefler’s ownership “threatens to harm Miraval’s carefully constructed reputation and brand.” , due to his alleged connection with Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.
The Stoli Group rejected the accusation. “Stoli and Mr. Shefler have been waging a highprofile and welldocumented battle against Putin for more than 20 years,” he said, referring to the legal battle over the rights to Stolichnaya vodka.
People close to Shefler say he is unlikely to be intimidated by the celebrity legal battle.
The billionaire says he suffered an attempted poisoning
According to Stoli Group, the vodka mogul has faced raids, smear campaigns aimed at damaging his reputation, and suspected poisoning attempts and kidnappings by Russian authorities in connection with a vodka trademark dispute.
Shefler took over a Russian company in 1997 and founded an affiliated company that acquired the trademarks of 43 brands, including Stolichnaya, for $300,000. Russia’s Audit Chamber later said the stamps were worth $400 million, prompting Moscow to declare the sale illegal in 2001.
In 2002, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office accused Shefler of threatening a government official and put him on the wanted list. To avoid a prison sentence, the billionaire left the country and moved to Switzerland and later Luxembourg, where the Stoli Group is based.
“He is keeping a low profile because he doesn’t want to be seen too clearly by the Russian government,” said a person who worked closely with Shefler. “He cares about his public image.”
However, he had an “up and down” reputation in the drinks industry, the former colleague added. “He likes to make people uncomfortable, to make them feel like they have to constantly prove themselves.” According to LinkedIn, Stoli Group has had several CEOs over the last decade.
Shefler declined an interview. Stoli Group said it is normal for companies to have managers with different tenures. “Every story, short or long, contributes to the success of the company,” he said.
Shefler’s leadership style has been highlighted before. In 2022, a British employment tribunal ordered Stoli to pay 1.62 million pounds (R9.76 million at current exchange rates) for the unfair dismissal of British manager Vlad Zabelin, who was sacked after retaliating during the Covid19 Salary cuts in the company’s team had been announced due to the pandemic.
The court heard that Shefler and SPI Spirits UK, a British subsidiary of Stoli Group, had reduced the salaries of the majority of their 2,000 employees by 30% during the pandemic.
The company said Zabelin left voluntarily and that Stoli took “unprecedented measures to minimize the damage of a global pandemic.” The group also said wages had returned to prepandemic levels after three months and that employees were being paid retroactively for the “remedial” measures.
Stoli Group, whose other brands include Kentucky Owl Bourbon and Bayou Rum, announced a reformulation of its vodka last year, changing the name from Stolichnaya to Stoli Vodka to distance itself from Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.
According to Pitt’s defense, the group, whose wine division Tenute del Mondo has wineries in Italy, Spain and Argentina, had been interested in the Miraval brand for some time. In the lawsuit, the actor claimed that Shefler reached out to him in 2016 after news of his and Jolie’s divorce broke and made him an offer of €60 million for the property as well as a discount on a private jet worth €50 million . When contacted, the actors refused to comment.
For a solution to be reached, Shefler and Pitt could buy each other out, or they could find a way to work together to run the business. However, representatives from both sides confirmed that no consensus had been reached in the negotiations so far.
Stoli said: “Shefler has worked hard to build a productive and beneficial partnership with Mr. Pitt.” A person familiar with the situation said: “Brad will not shy away from bullies.”
Text translated using artificial intelligence