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Pierre Castel, the 96-year-old founder of the wine merchant and producer Castel, was sentenced in Switzerland to pay back taxes and a fine of 424 million euros. According to the court, he had failed to inform the Swiss authorities "that he runs the Castel Group and received large dividends from 2007 to 2009 through a foundation in Liechtenstein". The previous years were already time-barred, he said. According to its own information, Castel is the third largest wine company in the world with a turnover of 800 million euros and 500 million bottles sold per year.
Pierre Castel had moved to Switzerland in 1981 after the election of the socialist François Mitterrand as French president and lived in Geneva from 1990 to 2012 under his middle name "Jesus". It was not until 2017 that the authorities linked Jesus Castel to Pierre Castel and identified him as the head of the Castel wine group. According to the tax authorities, Pierre Castel's tax declarations would have been "noticeably different from the income and assets attributed to him in the press". In the court proceedings, he denied having had an operational role within the wine group. He explained the lack of documents with his way of management: oral agreements and handshakes counted more for him than written contracts. It was precisely the lack of documents that the Swiss tax authorities used as an argument that Pierre Castel had "retained control of the group from an operational point of view and had received almost all dividends from the holding company". The court also found, in view of the large sums involved, that he "must bear the consequences of his conscious decision to prefer 'handshakes' to written documents, which consequently leads to an impossibility of providing tangible proof of his allegations." Pierre Castel appealed against part of the fines and back taxes.
The Castel group includes the brands Baron de Lestac in Bordeaux, Kriter in Burgundy, Roche Mazet in Languedoc, Listel in Camargue, the wine shops Barton&Guestier, Barrière Frères, Patriarche and the winery and retail chain Nicolas, plus the websites Savour and Vinatis.
(al / source: vitisphere; photo: 123rf)