Russia's national drink, vodka, must remain a matter of state, as far
as Moscow is concerned. For one major reason: it is a lucrative source
of income.
So the Russian state is making an all-out effort to restore its one-time
monopoly on the production and sale of the high-powered beverage. And Moscow
hopes this time to make amends for the blatant mistakes which Russia and
its corrupt officials had made after the dissolution of the former Soviet
Union.
In those communist-era days, the Soviets' monopoly on liquor was in
the hands of the foreign trade organisation Soyuzplodoimport. When communism
collapsed in 1991, and along with it the central command economy system,
there began the period of what experts called the "primary accumulation
of
capital".
Gigantic state concerns were broken up and mostly privatised. Soyuzplodoimport
was among them, first converted into a share corporation of the same name,
and later renamed Plodovaya Kompaniya.
A great many smaller companies also sprang up to produce wines and liquors.
Many produced illegally in order to avoid paying taxes, and ultimately
the state was no longer in control of the liquor market situation.
In the year 2000, Moscow set up the state-owned Rosspirtprom company
which was to control the state's shareholdings in 89 liquor distilleries.
In addition, their products were marked with special revenue stamps to
prove their legal origin.
But it did not take long before illegally-distilled liquor, adorned
with faked revenue stamps, was flooding the market. Even today, about
half of the alcohol consumed in Russia derives from illegal production
facilities. The enjoyment of these drinks proves fatal for thousands of
people each year.
Meanwhile a heated dispute erupted between a number of individual companies
and the state over the rights to well-known vodka brands which once had
been the pride of the Soviet Union and its liquid calling card abroad -
names like Stolichnaya, Moskovskaya and Limonnaya.
In 1997, Plodowaya Kompaniya, as the legal successor to Soyuzplodoimport,
handed over the rights to these brands to a so-called closed share company
by the not quite identical name - with an "o" missing - called Soyuzplodimport.
Last October, the Russian superior court of arbitration suspended the
point in Plodowaya Kompaniya's incorporation making it the legal successor
to Soyuzplodoimport. This made it illegal for the company to sell the brands
belonging to Soyuzplodimport.
Soon after, the Russian patent office Rospatent re-registered 43 brands
and put them under the control of the state, represented by the Agriculture
Ministry. But a few days later, Soyuzplodimport got 26 of the brands back.
According to Soyuzplodimport spokesman Sergei Boguslavski, a district
court at Rostov on the Don River has prohibited the Agriculture Ministry
from using the brand names awarded it by the patent office. This ruling
was issued after a company shareholder filed suit. Soyuzplodimport
general director Andrei Skurichin thundered that the patent office action
awarding assets of his company to the ministry was the "first step towards
nationalisation of private property".
He said it could not be ruled out that the authorities would attack
other companies in the same way and announced that he would seek help from
President Vladimir Putin.
But the Agriculture Ministry has now filed a counter-suit, and Farm
Minister Alexei Gordeyev said the state had a right "to win back what under
the law belongs to it".
He said that the current value of the Stolichnaya label was worth "hundreds
of millions of dollars", whereas the original sale of the rights to the
43 brands to the private company was a package deal of a mere 300,000 dollars.
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