China’s largest wine importer freed from custody over customs discrepancies
Monday, April 14th, 2008
SHANGHAI, April 14 - Don St. Pierre Jr., named the 37th most influential wine person globally, was recently released in Shanghai following a month-long detention and a major investigation of his firm’s wine importation business.
St. Pierre was being held as part of an extensive investigation of wine importers by the Chinese authorities looking for evidence that importers had been understating the value of wines they bring into the country in order to evade high customs duties in the growing Chinese wine market.
St. Pierre Jr., the company’s managing partner, and ASC vice president Carrie Xuan had been held in a customs department building, though neither was officially under arrest.
“The way the system works here is that they detain you while figuring out what to do,” said his father Don St. Pierre Sr. to the industry publication Wine Spectator. St. Pierre Sr., who has been doing business in China for 20 years, founded the company a decade ago with his son and currently serves as chairman. “There are 27 boxes of documents that have to be matched up with other pieces of paper to show that customs duty has been paid,” he said last week, prior to his son’s release. ”They have been going through them for three weeks now and found there is nothing wrong.” (more…)







