Cuban Cigars In Northern Europe: What We Know Now

For several weeks, the cigar world has been in turmoil in Sweden and Northern Europe. At the heart of the matter: a legal case involving Chen Zhi and a Swedish blog that has been publishing a stream of approximations and insinuations about Elite Trading, the exclusive distributor of Cuban cigars in the region. Between amalgams and speculation, L’Amateur de Cigare sets the record straight.

 

Key takeaways

• The provisional liquidation of Chen Zhi’s assets in the British Virgin Islands has no legal connection to Elite Trading’s situation in Sweden — officially confirmed to L’Amateur de Cigare by Interpath Advisory.

• Even armed with a valid US licence, Interpath failed to convince PwC to resume its audit mandate at Elite Trading.

• The separation between importer and distributor predates the Chen Zhi case by three years and was fully approved by Habanos.

On 25 May, Cigarrvärlden announced as “breaking news” that Elite Trading Scandinavia AB — the exclusive distributor of Cuban cigars for eight Nordic countries* — was facing imminent liquidation. On 2 June, a second article by the same blog partially walked back the claim, acknowledging that “Elite Trading’s problems are, at least in part, independent of the international turbulence” — meaning the Chen Zhi affair. This is precisely what L’Amateur de Cigare is now able to confirm, with official sources to back it up.

Desperately seeking an auditor

Elite Trading’s situation is in fact the result of a purely administrative sequence of events, as documented in Bolagsverket, Sweden’s public company register. On 8 December 2025, following the indictment of the Sino-Cambodian billionaire by US authorities, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) resigned from its audit mandate at Elite Trading — as it reportedly did for several other Habanos distributors it was associated with, according to our information. With no replacement in sight, Elite Trading (formerly known as Habanos Nordic) found itself on the list of companies without an auditor, approaching the six-month threshold beyond which the Swedish authorities can initiate compulsory liquidation proceedings.

Elite Trading to be liquidated “in an orderly manner”

In a filing submitted to Bolagsverket on 28 April 2026 and signed by Anders Worsøe, a Danish lawyer and spokesperson for Elite Trading, the company’s owners explicitly confirm their intention to liquidate the company, while expressing their wish to do so “in an orderly manner” — which requires the prior appointment of an auditor.

But — and this is where the Swedish blog sows confusion — this procedure has nothing to do with the provisional liquidation of Chen Zhi’s assets ordered by the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in January 2026. Interpath Advisory, appointed as provisional liquidator of 30 offshore companies linked to Chen Zhi — including Simply Advanced Limited, which holds a 57% stake in Allied Cigar Corporation — confirms this unambiguously to L’Amateur de Cigare: “Interpath is not involved in the Swedish process.” The two procedures are entirely distinct and independent.

On 18 March 2026, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) granted Interpath Advisory a 28-day licence (No. TCO-2026-1464321-2) covering transactions necessary for the management of the Allied Cigar group in Spain. Armed with this licence, Interpath contacted PwC Sweden on 27 March to ask it to resume its audit mandate at Elite Trading Scandinavia. On 13 April, a senior executive at PwC Sweden formally declined: “We hereby inform you that we, Öhrlings PricewaterhouseCoopers AB, do not intend to undertake the engagement as auditor of the company Elite Trading Scandinavia AB.” Even with explicit US legal cover, PwC refused to return. The reputational risk associated with Chen Zhi was evidently deemed unacceptable.

Copy of the email sent by PwC Sweden to Interpath on April 13, 2026

 

An independent auditor has since come forward. On 26 May 2026, Felix Trinh, a licensed auditor based in Gothenburg (FT Revision), contacted Bolagsverket to offer his services, subject to an advance payment of SEK 100,000 (approx. €9,200). His formal appointment has not yet been registered at the time of writing. Compulsory liquidation by Bolagsverket is therefore not a foregone conclusion: with an auditor having recently accepted the mandate, the immediate threat has been temporarily lifted.

Elite Trading has also appealed against the revocation of its tobacco licence by the City of Gothenburg — a suspensive appeal, meaning that Elite Trading continues to operate legally throughout the duration of the proceedings, which could extend into early 2027.

Contacted by L’Amateur de Cigare, Elite Trading Scandinavia declined to comment and referred us to Habanos S.A. Habanos’ communications department responded: “Regarding your questions, as they concern organizational aspects and business decisions of the distribution network, we are not able to comment on these.”

The import/distribution split

The second source of confusion in Cigarrvärlden’s articles concerns the creation of The Premium Company Nordic AB by Stephan Praetorius, who served as Managing Director of Habanos Nordic and then Elite Trading for twenty-one years. The blog describes this as a “highly unusual” transfer of distribution rights — insinuating a last-minute manoeuvre linked to the Chen Zhi crisis.

* Elite Trading Scandinavia AB is the Habanos exclusive distributor in Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia