Santé owners vow to fight charges over alcohol sales

The owners of online alcohol retailer Santé say they will plead not guilty and mount a strong defence when they appear in court on September 2, mbl.is reports. They have been charged with selling one bottle of red wine and one case of beer.

The case is the second involving an Icelandic online alcohol retailer to reach court. In April, Vilhjálmur Forberg Ólafsson, the operator of online store Smáríkið, was convicted by the District Court of Reykjanes for selling a three-litre white wine pouch. He was fined 100,000 Icelandic krónur. The ruling has been appealed to the Court of Appeal.

Santé owners question timing

Santé owners Arnar Sigurðsson and Elías Blöndal Guðjónsson strongly criticise the decision to prosecute their case while the Smáríkið case is still awaiting a ruling from the Court of Appeal. They say prosecutors had previously described Smáríkið as a test case whose outcome would influence whether further charges were brought against other online retailers.

“The prosecution itself stated in the media in September 2025 that no further charges were forthcoming and that it would await the outcome of the Smáríkið case, since it would have a major bearing on further charges against other online stores. Smáríkið was thereby made the state’s declared test case,” Elías told mbl.is.

“It is undeniably unusual that the police are bringing charges in more cases, such as ours, while there is still no final ruling from the Court of Appeal.”

Elías said the purpose of a test case was to obtain a final judicial ruling on an unclear legal issue. A case that is no longer allowed to reach a conclusion before other cases are pursued had never truly been a test case, he argued.

Arnar also questioned why authorities could not wait for the Court of Appeal’s ruling.

“And why is it then necessary to pursue a test case? This is highly contradictory,” he told mbl.is.

“What are they going to do if they win this case? Will they pursue another case over one more bottle of red wine? And then what? Will more people be prosecuted?” Arnar asked. He said about 90,000 people bought their alcohol from online retailers.

Penalty provisions must be clear

Elías said a fundamental principle of criminal law was that provisions imposing penalties must be clear, unambiguous and foreseeable. Citizens must be able to determine from the wording of the law what is punishable before taking action, he said.

He pointed to draft amendments to Iceland’s alcohol legislation prepared by the Ministry of Justice while it was responsible for the legislation. The drafts state that the term “retail sale” is not defined in Iceland’s alcohol laws and that, without action, uncertainty would continue over the legality of domestic online alcohol stores.

Elías said the ministry had described that uncertainty as unacceptable both for the authorities and the general public. “When the ministry responsible for the legislation itself states that the key term on which all the criminalisation is based is undefined, it is simply incomprehensible how the requirement for clarity can be met,” he said.