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A winemaker and wine trader from Valais (Switzerland) was sentenced by the Cantonal Court in Sion to three and a half years in prison for fraud and forgery. The man had sold several hundred thousand liters of foreign and Schaffhausen wine under the designation AOC Valais between 2009 and 2016. According to the investigations of the Public Prosecutor's Office, the winemaker purchased over 730,000 liters of Spanish wine and around 105,000 liters of Schaffhausen wine from two German-speaking companies during this period. In return, he issued several dozen fake invoices or bookings in the name of Valais wineries, which were supposedly supposed to supply him with AOC wines from Valais. These fabricated deliveries allowed the businessman to label the wines with the origin of Valais. Among the buyers of the counterfeit bottles were well-known dealers such as Caves Garnier, Fenaco, Mövenpick Wine, and Giroud Vins SA.
According to the prosecutor, the man had established a "sophisticated, opaque, and fraudulent" system by using fake invoices and false cellar bookings or accounting entries "to obscure the true origin and true nature of the wine sold." The winemaker was caught after the Swiss wine control system was reformed in 2016. This facilitated the exchange of information between the various state control authorities. In the trial, the prosecution and the plaintiff's side had demanded five years in prison.
(ru / SRF; Foodaktuell)