Sweden's Cuban Cigar Importer Is Being Wound Up. What It Means for Cuban Cigars in Europe.

For thirty years, almost every legal box of Cuban cigars sold in Sweden came through one company in Göteborg. That company is now being wound up. Elite Trading Scandinavia AB, known until recently as Habanos Nordic AB, was the exclusive Habanos importer for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Its owners voted to liquidate it on 1 July 2026. Its tobacco licence, withdrawn by the City of Göteborg last December, is gone for good. And as of mid-October, nobody has publicly named who will bring in the next pallet of Cohibas.

The Finder reads the shelves of Cigarrummet in Stockholm several times a day. On 19 September it showed seven pack sizes of Cuban cigars in stock. By 4 October it showed one. It has recovered a little since, to four, but none of them is a full box of 25. The last full box we saw there, Romeo y Julieta Short Churchills at 7,450 kr, went out of stock on 25 September.

What happened

The short version: the City of Göteborg decided the company’s ownership no longer passed the suitability test that every Swedish tobacco wholesaler must meet, and the company chose to close rather than keep fighting.

• September 2025. Göteborg’s licensing office opens a review of the company’s tobacco permit after changes in its ownership and board, and asks for updated ownership documents (Cigar Inspector, 16 September 2025).
• 8 December 2025. PwC resigns as the company’s auditor, after US prosecutors indict Chen Zhi, the Cambodian businessman whose holding group owns part of the chain above Habanos S.A. (Cigars-connect, June 2026).
• 15 December 2025. Göteborg withdraws the licence. The reasons given, as reported by Cigarrvärlden: the company failed to report changes to its board and ownership, failed to send documents the city asked for, and the city called the allegations against Chen Zhi “mycket allvarliga”, very serious.
• Early summer 2026. The administrative court in Göteborg rejects the company’s appeal, finding that Chen Zhi still held a significant share and that the company had not supplied the documents needed to judge his suitability (Flamman, 17 August 2026).
• 1 July 2026. The shareholders vote for voluntary liquidation. Bolagsverket receives the filing on 3 August. The company register now lists a liquidator.
• 30 July 2026. EU sanctions against Chen Zhi and his Prince Group take effect.
• 11 September 2026. After the liquidator asks to withdraw the remaining appeal, the court dismisses it and the decision becomes final (Cigarrvärlden, 17 September 2026).

Chen Zhi has not been convicted of the US charges. The point for a smoker is not his guilt. It is that a Swedish tobacco wholesaler must show the authorities who owns it, and this one could not, or would not.

This was not a small business in trouble. Flamman reported revenue of 87 million kronor for 2024, 17 employees, and an estimate from Hatem Sabbagh of Cigarrklubben that the company handled about 45 per cent of the Swedish cigar market. The company register shows net revenue of about 119 million kronor for 2025. In 2005 the company said it imported about a million Cuban cigars a year.

Who supplies Swedish shops now

That is the question nobody has answered in public.

Since January 2025, sales to retailers have run through a second company, The Premium Company Nordic AB, set up by the former managing director Stephan Praetorius. Under that arrangement, Elite Trading remained the importer and held the stock, while The Premium Company sold it on to shops (Cigars-connect, June 2026). With the importer in liquidation, what happens to that stock and to the Habanos contract has not been reported. Flamman quoted the media personality Jan Emanuel saying he would gladly talk to the liquidator about taking over the business. We have found no report that any deal has been made.

Not every Swedish shop is affected in the same way. One retailer told Flamman that he buys through a different importer and expects little change. Shops that bought directly or indirectly from the Nordic importer are selling what they already have.

This is not only a Swedish problem

The same ownership chain runs to Habanos distributors across Europe. In Germany, the exclusive distributor 5th Avenue Products Trading stopped shipping in early September and went into insolvency proceedings within days; we covered what that did to German shelves in Germany Has Run Out of Cuban Cigars. Cigarrvärlden reports that ownership reviews are under way in several other countries, and that Europe accounted for more than half of Habanos’s sales in 2024.

On the Finder this week, the shelves that are still full are in Britain and Switzerland, which have their own distributors and their own allocations. At one British shop we track, prices rose by about 11 per cent in the middle of October. German shelves are still almost empty.

What has changed for buyers in Europe

Which markets are affected. Two importers in the same ownership chain have stopped supplying in 2026: the Nordic and Baltic importer covered here, for eight countries, and 5th Avenue, for Germany, Austria and Poland, which is in insolvency proceedings. Britain and Switzerland are supplied by their own distributors. Ownership reviews are reported in several other countries.

How long it lasts. No new importer, and no date for new supply, has been announced for any of the affected markets.

Crossing a border. Within the EU, tobacco you buy duty-paid for your own use and carry home in your own luggage is taxed in the country where you bought it. EU law sets guide levels as evidence of personal use (not as limits), at a minimum of 200 cigars or 400 cigarillos per person; countries may set higher guide levels but not lower ones (Directive 2008/118, Art. 32). Arriving from outside the EU, from Switzerland or Britain for example, the duty-free allowance is 50 cigars or 100 cigarillos (or a proportionate mix with cigarettes or tobacco); above that you pay customs duty, tobacco excise and VAT in the country you enter (European Consumer Centre Germany). Online orders are different: selling tobacco to a consumer in another EU country needs the seller to be registered in both countries, and some countries ban it. Our allowance calculator sets out the figures for the EU, Finland, the UK, Switzerland and Norway.

Counterfeits. Fake Cuban cigar boxes are a long-standing problem, especially outside licensed shops. The box code stamped on the underside is one of the first things to check; our box-code decoder explains how to read it.

How we know, and what we don’t

The stock figures come from the Finder’s own readings of Cigarrummet’s product pages, taken several times a day, and count every pack size the shop lists. The timeline comes from the reporting and records listed below; where sources disagree, we name the source.

What we don’t know is who will import Habanos into the Nordics next, when, or at what price. When that is announced, we will update this page.

Sources: Flamman, “Kris för kubanska cigarrer – importör likvideras”, 17 August 2026; Cigars-connect, “Cuban Cigars in Northern Europe: What We Know Now”, 4 June 2026; Cigar Inspector, “Habanos Nordic Supply at Risk Amid Gothenburg Investigation”, 16 September 2025; Cigarrvärlden (Cigarrklubben), reports of 7 January, 13 August, 20 August and 17 September 2026; company register entry for Elite Trading Scandinavia AB (org. nr 556524-2780) via Bolagsfakta.