Santé owners charged over alleged illegal alcohol sales
Thursday 13th August 2026 on 20:01 in
Iceland
Owners of the online alcohol retailer Santé, Arnar Sigurðsson and Elías Blöndal Guðjónsson, have been charged with violating Icelandic alcohol laws over the sale of a bottle of red wine and a case of beer, mbl.is reports.
The indictment was issued by the chief of police in the capital region on June 19. It alleges that the two men, as the day-to-day managers of Sante ehf. and the French company SanteWines SAS, were responsible for the unauthorised retail sale of alcohol on August 14, 2025.
One charge concerns the sale of a bottle of 2020 Guelbenzu Vierlas red wine for 3,200 Icelandic krónur. A Santé employee processed the sale at the company’s shop at Skeifan 8.
The second concerns the sale of 12 large cans of BolaX beer for 5,810 krónur through the online shop sante.is, operated by SanteWines SAS. The beer was delivered to the buyer after payment was received through the website’s payment gateway that same day.
The indictment states that both sales formed part of the companies’ business activities. Sante ehf. imported the alcohol under import licences, or acquired it by other means, and stored it at its premises in Skeifan until it was sold and delivered.
Neither the defendants nor the companies held a licence for the retail sale of alcohol in Iceland, according to the indictment. The transactions therefore allegedly violated the exclusive right of the State Alcohol and Tobacco Store to sell alcohol at retail.
Arnar and Elías are also charged with money laundering in a separate section of the indictment. That charge concerns the same total amount as the sales, 9,010 krónur, and alleges that SanteWines SAS obtained proceeds from the offences and used them for the company’s operations. The money-laundering charge depends on whether the men are convicted of the alleged sales.
Prosecutors are seeking convictions, punishment and payment of all legal costs. The case will be formally opened at Reykjavík District Court at 2.30pm on September 2.
It is the second criminal case brought in Iceland over online alcohol sales. In April, Vilhjálmur Forberg Ólafsson, the operator of the online shop Smáríkið, was convicted by Reykjanes District Court over the sale of a three-litre box of white wine and fined 100,000 krónur.
The court found that the sales arrangement used by the companies behind that shop had been set up specifically to circumvent the State Alcohol and Tobacco Store’s exclusive right. The judgment has been appealed to the Court of Appeal.