Winegrower in Sion on trial for misuse of AOC label
Published: Monday, Aug 26th 2024, 04:40
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A Valais winegrower will stand trial in Sion on Monday. He is accused of buying hundreds of thousands of liters of foreign wine and selling it under the AOC Valais designation. He is facing charges including embezzlement, fraud, forgery of goods and forgery of documents.
The man is accused of setting up a "sophisticated, opaque and fraudulent" scheme by using forged invoices and false cellar or accounting entries "to disguise the true origin and true nature of the wine sold", the public prosecutor's office wrote in its 36-page indictment, which summarizes several years of investigations. The acts are said to have occurred at least between 2009 and 2016.
According to the investigations by the public prosecutor's office, the winegrower bought over 730,000 liters of Spanish wine and around 105,000 liters of Schaffhausen wine from two German-speaking companies during this period. He concealed these purchases by including invoices for cellar work, bottling and consulting services in his accounts.
On the other hand, the man created several dozen fake invoices or bookings in the name of Valais wineries that allegedly supplied him with AOC wines from Valais "to ensure the adequacy of stocks and to be able to sell these wines". These deliveries never took place, but enabled the winegrower to pass off a wine as Valais wine that was not.
"Wine falsely sold under the AOC Valais designation was thus placed on the market by deceiving buyers, consumers and the winegrowing supervisory bodies," the indictment states. The maneuver enabled the accused "to obtain an unlawful advantage and to enrich himself unlawfully".
The winegrower had attracted suspicion after the wine control system was reformed in 2016, which facilitated the exchange of information between the various state control authorities. The State of Valais filed a complaint and appeared as a civil party in January 2017.
©Keystone/SDA
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