Russian vodka owner to pay £1.6m over sacking

Stoli vodka producer SPI Group has been ordered to pay £1.62 million (US$1.9m) for the unfair dismissal of a UK executive after he objected to staff pay cuts during the pandemic.

In June 2020, SPI Spirits UK executive Vlad Zabelin was dismissed with immediate effect ‘out of the blue’, by SPI Spirits UK owner Yuri Shefler, the judgement found.

The firing was discovered to be in response to Zabelin raising ‘whistleblowing concerns’ about staff cuts taking place due to the economic threat of Covid-19, and ‘at a time of vulnerability for staff, he was simply dismissed’.

The tribunal was told that in 2020 Shefler had slashed the pay of his 2,000 workers by 30% ‘across the board’.

A spokesperson for SPI Group commented: “SPI UK disagrees with the decision and plans to appeal in due course.

“SPI, along with businesses around the globe, took unprecedented steps to minimise damage from a global pandemic. As soon as it was evident that those steps were no longer necessary, compensation was restored to pre-pandemic levels and employees were retroactively paid for the pandemic mitigation. As such, SPI continues to retain and attract top talent.”

SPI Spirits UK and Shefler are to ‘jointly and severally’ pay £1.62m in damages to the claimant for whistleblowing detriments, with Shefler charged an additional £3,589 (US$4,270) for automatic unfair dismissal.

Claims against Natasha Sidorenco, director of SPI Spirits UK, were also made, but not upheld.

In March, the vodka producer ended the use of the Stolichnaya name in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Shefler relocated to Luxembourg when Putin came to power, and the brand is now sold and marketed as Stoli.

In more legal news, a distillery in Pittsburgh, US, was recently made to pay back US$38,951 in wages to 41 workers after using its tip pool illegally.