When Christophe Lacarin moved to Ukraine more than a decade ago to make wine, he was beset by problems practically from day one.
Now Lacarin, a French citizen who owns the “Marquis de Lacarin” wine label and a 150-hectare vineyard in the village of Shabo in Odesa Oblast, some 500 kilometers south of Kyiv, has appealed to Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to protect his business.
“During your latest visit to France, you (Groysman) promised to protect French investments in Ukraine from illegal takeover attempts. I ask you to ensure there is justice, and to protect the cultural heritage of the (wine-making) region,” Lacarin wrote on Facebook on Nov. 25.
The wine maker appealed to Groysman after intruders destroyed grape vines in three different parts of his vineyard with a bulldozer on Nov.25. In total, Lacarin said, more than 10 hectares of 40-year-old grape vineswere destroyed by “local landholders.”
“Some locals don’t want me to do business here. The courts don’t work, neither do law enforcers protect businesses from the bandits who destroyed my best grape vines with no court decision that would let them do this,” Lacarin told the Kyiv Post on Dec. 5.
“Such barbarism makes me believe that it is the bad time for foreign investment in Ukraine,” he added.
Wine wars
Lacarin told the dumskaya.net news website that he was on his way to Odesa Oblast’s Fiscal Service for yet another inspection on Nov. 25 when his wife Marianna called him and said a bulldozer had driven onto his private property and started uprooting grape vines.
“My wife called the police; they came and took a statement. I was in shock!” the businessman said.
The Frenchmen has long been in conflict with four local landholders and regulatory organs.
Lacarin moved to Ukraine and started making wine according to his family method more than 10 years ago. He applied unsuccessfully several times for a wine business license, and only obtained the right to make wine in Ukraine in April 2016, after the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, adopted a bill on simplifying the process of legalizing small wine businesses.
Lacarin managed to obtain the license with the help of then Odesa Governor Mikheil Saakashvili. But after Saakashvili resigned from his post in November, the pressure on Lacarin resumed, the Frenchman says.
“Now I’m fighting in the courts for the right to work in Ukraine. And they (the landholders) are doing everything to stop me from making wine,” Lacarin said.
In 2005, Lacarin and his wife Marianna signed a 25-year rent agreement for 150 hectares of vineyards with 15 local landlords in the village of Shabo, and founded a private winery there. But they have been fighting with local businessmen and officials for the right to be a private winemaker in the area ever since.
Then in March 2015, Lacarin complained that intruders had set several of his grape vines on fire. Then in February 2016, the fiscal service raised taxes for winemakers to Hr 500,000 a year and Lacarin refused to pay such a high price.
Land dispute
But after the winemaker obtained a wine-making license for Hr 780 in April 2016, he thought he might finally get down to the serious business of winemaking in Ukraine.
However, a long-running dispute over the right to use the land Lacarin rents has erupted again, threatening to put a stopper in his plans once more.
Lacarin is suing four out of 15 landowners he rents from.
Local businessman Olexandr Muntyan, the son of Grigori Muntyan, one of the 15 owners of the land Lacarin rents for his business, appealed to the local tax office and is now fighting with Lacarin for control of the land and vineyard.
Muntyan inherited his father’s lands. Although Lacarin has all the required rental documents, Muntyan told the Kyiv Post that French winemaker had seized his father’s vineyard illegally and has no right to do business there.
Muntyan says he doesn’t know who uprooted the grape vines with the bulldozer, but claimed that Lacarin himself had set his grape vines on fire in 2015 to get insurance money.
Muntyan also said Lacarin had not shown up for court hearings over the rent dispute, and instead had filed an appeal, and is now paying neither rent nor taxes.
“He refused to pay, saying the price is high. But he lives in Ukraine, his kids go to our school, he uses our roads. We also pay these high taxes, so why shouldn’t he?” said Muntyan.
Lacarin told the Kyiv Post that to be a licensed winemaker in Ukraine; businessmen now have to have not only a license for winemaking, but also a license for bottling and for handling wine-making materials.
“I had to pay a Hr 75,000 penalty because my license was incomplete,” said Lacarin. “But that was not all. In the rest of the world, wine is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grapes. But in Ukraine it is firstly a bottle, an excise label, and a cork. I used a traditional sealing wax to seal the bottle, instead of gluing on the tax label (as part of the seal). For that, I’ve got to pay a Hr 17,000 penalty.”
Call for talks
In a message published by the press service of Odesa Oblast National Police department on Dec. 3, Yevgen Orlov, the head Belgorod-Dnistrovskiy district of Odesa Oblast police department,called for a meeting and negotiations between the parties to the conflict, Muntyan and Lacarin, and their lawyers.
Orlov said that after Lacarin’s wife submitted her statement on the bulldozer vandalism incident on Nov. 25, the police opened a pre-trial investigation on theft, but then discovered there was a land dispute as well.
“We will identify the intruders who destroyed the property. But the landlords and tenant must solve their conflict in court,” Orlov said in the press release.
Lacarin thinks Muntyan wants his land and vineyard back for a construction project, but Muntyan disputed this, saying it is still forbidden to carry out construction on agricultural land.
The Odesa Oblast Fiscal service didn’t respond to questions from the Kyiv Post request about the alleged pressure being put on business in the region.
Meanwhile, in their “Wine scandal” investigation in 2015, journalists of from the local 7th TV channel traveled across Odessa Oblast’s Shabo wine-making region and discovered that the one can buy homemade wine in every other yard for Hr 15 a bottle.
And the locals haven’t even heard they need a license to sell wine.
