The company "Russian Standard Vodka" (RSV) owned by Rustam Tariko suffered another defeat in pursuit of its ex-manager Carlo Radikati, now the head of a group “Russian Alcohol” (TM"Green Mark "," Cranes "). Yesterday the Moscow Arbitration Court dismissed RSV claim on recovery from the Mr. Radikati of 311.4 million rubles which, according to the company, had been unreasonably spent on marketing services to promote vodka in the U.S. market. Earlier PCB tried to institute criminal proceeding against the manager for issuing himself a bonus of $ 100 thousand, but in September 2009 the first metropolitan police department dropped the case.

in June 2009 RSV filed in metropolitan court of arbitration a claim for 311.4 million rubles against Carlo Radikati. At that time, Mr. Radikati had been already working as CEO of the largest producer of vodka in Russia, in the company "Russian Alcohol". According to the plaintiff, when Radikati leaded the company PCB (May 2007 - July 2008) he caused the company loss of $ 12.4 million - an amount that had been transferred to the company Russian Standard Vodka USA (RSV) as payment for marketing services on vodka market exploration and promotion of RSV brands in the United States.

In the U.S. the company sales began in 2005 - vodka "Russian Standard IMPERIA" entered the market, and in 2007 - Russian Standard Original" did the same. RSV considered the action of Mr. Radikati irrelevant to the grounds of "reasonableness and good faith" because in 2007 sales and marketing of RSV products in the United States were conducted by Roust Trading Ltd. In addition, the fact that RSV provided its services for the disputed amount had not been confirmed in written form.

RSV could not prove its case - yesterday the court dismissed the suit of the company. Motives of such a decision of the court will be known when the full text of a judicial act is written. "We are satisfied with the outcome of the case, because the claim was completely unfounded," - told “Kommersant” the lawyer of Carlo Radikati, Jacob Mastinsky. According to him, claim of damages caused was insolvent, as presented in the trial balance sheets of RSV for 2007-2008 showed that the company earned profits of 1.5 billion rubles. This was also confirmed by audit of PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit (Auditor of RSV at the time). "The plaintiff claimed that the RSV had had no interest in selling vodka in the U.S., as it had been sold by another company then - Roust Trading Ltd, but with the help of retrieved list of affiliates we have proved that Roust Trading has been a founder of both RSV USA and Russian company RSV, that means all the companies are under one holding company", says Mr. Mastinsky.

All the attempts to contact Carlo Radikati failed. Lawyers of “Russian Standard” after the hearing promised to appeal the court decision.

Apart from the case in arbitration court RSV aimed at prosecution of Mr. Radikati. Last summer, on the RSV claim Ministry of Internal Affairs of Central Administrative District of Moscow initiated a case against the former head of the company on the 160 article of the Criminal Code (embezzlement), which provides imprisonment for up to six years. In a statement RSV indicated that Carlo Radikati allegedly issued himself a bonus of $ 100 thousand bypassing the board of directors. On September 11 the case was dropped: according to the lawyer of Radikati Alexander Asnis, the investigation found out that the bonus was obtained in accordance with the internal rules of RSV.