Several European Habanos distributors have had their bank accounts closed in recent weeks, according to our sources.

 

Although Chen Zhi is not officially sanctioned on the Continent, several European Habanos distributors have in recent weeks faced banking restrictions, including outright account closures.

According to our sources, Laguito 1492 (Benelux) and Fifth Avenue (Germany, Austria, Poland) have had their bank accounts unilaterally closed.

Tabacalera SLU, the Habanos distributor for Spain and a direct co-shareholder in Habanos S.A., declines to confirm that it has suffered account closures, but according to market sources cited in late February by the Spanish outlet El Confidencial, banks have refused it short-term financing due to Chen Zhi’s presence in its shareholder structure.

Reached by L’Amateur, Tabacalera SLU clarified that the voluntary pre-insolvency proceedings it initiated in late 2025 before the Spanish courts were “aimed at protecting the company’s banking relationships and ensuring operational continuity.” On the situation facing its partner distributors, the company referred us to Habanos S.A. and declined to comment further.

“We work with several banks, so we are still able to process payments without interruption,” one European distributor told us on condition of anonymity.

In the past, banks have also cited other reasons for restricting or terminating relationships with these companies — chief among them transactions with Cuba, a country that has been under US sanctions for more than 60 years.

 

“De-risking” and “secondary sanctions”

The situation facing Fifth Avenue and Laguito 1492 differs somewhat from that of Hunters & Frankau: the British distributor operates in a country where Chen Zhi is formally sanctioned by domestic financial and administrative authorities.

What the continental distributors are experiencing is what finance professionals call “bank de-risking” — the practice of closing or refusing accounts to companies deemed likely to expose a bank to legal or reputational risk, even in the absence of any legal obligation to do so.

Banks are also wary of US secondary sanctions, as a spokesperson for the Belgian financial sector federation Febelfin made plain: “In the area of financial sanctions, the rules are strict: any contact with a designated person or entity is prohibited. This constraint is further reinforced by the extraterritorial reach of US sanctions. Belgian banks exposed to the dollar system or reliant on American correspondent banks must take these sanctions into account, even when they do not flow from Belgian or European law, in order to avoid the real risk of secondary sanctions or loss of access to the US market.” Febelfin nonetheless stated that it was not “aware of any issue” involving account closures linked to Chen Zhi, adding only that its members “comply with the sanctions framework.”

 

“An enormous black box”

“Bank compliance is an enormous black box,” one European distributor confided. “There is no transparency — even internally. When we ask for explanations, the commercial teams simply tell us, ‘We can no longer work with you because your file is flagging orange or red.’ And often they don’t know much more than that themselves.”

Habanos S.A., in which Chen Zhi holds a stake through Tabacalera SLU and a cascade of shell companies, systematically holds a shareholding in each of its exclusive distributors worldwide.

Tabacalera SLU has launched several legal proceedings in Spain and the Caribbean aimed at “separating” itself from Chen Zhi. “Whether that takes two months, six months or a year — no one knows,” one distributor acknowledged.

 

Laurent Mimouni
Illustration: ©ShutterstockAI