INDIA – Paul-Robert Bouhier has resigned from his position as Managing Director for Pernod Ricard India after a 4-month tenure due to personal reasons.

Bouhier held several leadership positions at Pernod, including being a managing director for Southern Europe. He joined Pernod Ricard in 1995 and has worked in France, Ireland, Singapore, South Africa, and Italy.

During his appointment, the French alcohol major said, Bouhier would be responsible for transforming the company’s India business strategy, developing the organization and people, and finding new opportunities for sustainable and profitable business growth.

However, the going got tough for the MD as the Indian unit received several blows from the government that could amount to “massive losses.”

The resignation follows the denial of a license to market the company’s brands in New Delhi City on the grounds of the ongoing investigations against the company.

Pernod Ricard India, which owns brands such as Royal Stag and Blenders Pride, in a statement, said it will ”challenge through the due process the recent decision” by the excise authorities to deny this operating license.

Earlier, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had arrested Pernod Ricard’s executive Benoy Babu in November last year, in the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy-related money laundering case.

The trial court had denied bail to Babu and other accused in the case. The trial court had said the oral and documentary evidence suggested Babu was the brain behind the decision taken by the accused company, Pernod Ricard, for furnishing corporate guarantees of Rs 200 crore for the loans availed by other members of the cartel from HSBC Bank.

The court said they considered it an investment to take control of the retail liquor business and to achieve the highest market share in the sale of liquor brands by the company.

The money laundering case stems from a CBI FIR, which was lodged in the matter after Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena recommended a CBI probe.

The Delhi government implemented the excise policy on November 17, 2021, but scrapped it after the CBI probe was recommended amid allegations of corruption.

The government went back to its old excise policy, which was operational before November 17, 2021, from September 1, 2022, in which private players in retail liquor sales were replaced by its four corporations.

The same old excise policy is the one that forced alcohol marketers to re-apply for licenses, Pernod Ricard getting unlucky.

The company is also fighting a nearly US$250-million tax demand for allegedly undervaluing concentrate imports for over a decade.

Indian officials said the company owed an additional duty of 20.1 billion rupees (US$244 million), plus interest, for imports up to 2020.

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