Moscow
Russia launched a nationwide manhunt this week for the owner of Stolichnaya vodka, who has been charged with threatening to kill a government official. The owner, Yuri Shefler, has been tussling with the Russian government over trademarks since the early 1990s, when he bought a controlling stake in the newly privatized vodka industry. Shefler then sold the name Stolichnaya and other top liquor brands to his own company, set up in Switzerland. The Russian government re-nationalized the vodka brands, saying they had been illegally privatized, but Shefler continued to manufacture and export Stoli from abroad. Now prosecutors accuse him of threatening to kill the head of Russia’s national vodka-exporting company, and they say he will be arrested if he is found in Russia. “I hide from no one,” Shefler told the London Independent. He is thought to be in Switzerland.
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