A California Superior Court judge has ordered key executives from the Stoli Group to provide testimony in the ongoing legal battle between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie over Château Miraval, delivering another courtroom win for Pitt on June 17 as the bitter winery dispute continues.
Judge Cindy Pánuco partially granted Pitt’s motion to depose business associates linked to Jolie’s former ownership stake in the French estate. The ruling requires Stoli Group spirits executive Alexey Oliynik, who serves on the company’s board of directors, to sit for questioning. Representatives from Tenute del Mondo — the Stoli Group’s wine business unit that purchased Jolie’s stake — and Nouvel, the investment entity that previously held her 50 percent share, must also provide testimony.
The companies must submit dates for Oliynik’s testimony to Pitt’s legal team by Aug. 7. That same deadline applies to confirming the availability of Marina Troyanovskaya, the Stoli Group’s head of marketing.
Overcoming Resistance to Discovery
Pitt’s attorneys contended that these executives possessed firsthand knowledge of Jolie’s 2021 sale of the winery, which the former couple had jointly owned. In June 2025, Pitt’s team filed court documents seeking to depose Oliynik, who allegedly refused to produce relevant documents or submit to questioning, claiming he could not be compelled because he resides in Switzerland. The June 17 order now eliminates that barrier. A source said that Stoli parties will now have to face the music and be transparent about the transaction.
However, Judge Pánuco denied Pitt’s request for sanctions or financial penalties against the opposing side related to the discovery process, rendering this a partial rather than total victory.
A String of Procedural Gains
The decision marks the latest in a series of courtroom gains for Pitt as the case moves toward trial. On June 24, the California Court of Appeal reversed an earlier finding that had downplayed the involvement of Yuri Shefler, the Stoli Group’s billionaire owner, in the winery transaction. The appellate court expressed skepticism of Shefler’s assertion that he had minimal involvement, stating it “defies credulity that Shefler, a sophisticated businessman, would risk almost $40 million on a transaction about which he knew nothing and with which he had no involvement.”
That ruling paves the way for Pitt’s team to pursue Shefler’s own testimony. A separate hearing on whether the Russian-born businessman based in Switzerland must sit for a deposition is scheduled for July 8. Shefler has been a recurring focus of Pitt’s legal strategy since 2023.
A judge found that attorneys representing the Stoli Group’s side had improperly blocked testimony during a key deposition. Former Stoli General Counsel Todd Culyba had been instructed not to answer 33 questions during a December deposition, a restriction the court determined was improper. The blocked questions examined Shefler’s involvement in Jolie’s sale of her indirect interest in Miraval. The judge ruled that attorney-client privilege did not protect the business aspects of the transaction and ordered Culyba to sit for an additional deposition to answer those questions along with any related follow-ups.
In December 2025, Pitt also secured a discovery win when a judge ordered Jolie to produce certain unredacted, non-attorney communications tied to the winery dispute. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge separately denied Pitt’s effort to force Jolie to hand over a set of private emails, ruling he had not met the threshold to overcome her attorney-client privilege claims.
Origins of the Legal Battle
Brad Pitt, 62, and Angelina Jolie, 51, purchased Château Miraval together in 2008. The sprawling estate in southern France became one of the world’s most recognizable celebrity-owned wineries. In 2022, Pitt filed a lawsuit contending that Jolie had sold her stake to Tenute del Mondo in 2021 in violation of an agreement that neither party would do so without the other’s consent.
Jolie denied any such agreement existed and filed a countersuit, accusing Pitt of waging what she described as a vindictive campaign against her. In 2023, Pitt filed additional court documents seeking financial compensation over the sale. The couple finalized their divorce in December 2024 after years of separation proceedings that had stretched far beyond family matters into contested questions of business ownership and contractual obligation.
Pitt’s legal team has also argued that the Stoli Group’s reputation drew criticism and faced boycotts linked to its alleged connection with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and a homophobic legislative agenda — damage that, in their view, harmed an enterprise Pitt had carefully cultivated.
Jolie’s camp pushed back, characterizing that framing as a xenophobic and factually inaccurate smear of Shefler, whom her team described as a Russian exile and long-standing critic of Putin. An insider close to Jolie maintained that she chose Stoli as a distribution partner solely to benefit the business and the six children she and Pitt share — Maddox, 24; Pax, 22; Zahara, 21; Shiloh, 20; and twins Knox and Vivienne, 17.
Looking Ahead
Tenute del Mondo and Nouvel each filed formal objections to the deposition requests prior to the June 17 ruling, arguing the testimony was unnecessary for the case. The court’s order overrode those objections, setting Aug. 7 as the deadline for scheduling key depositions.
Jolie’s attorney, Paul Murphy, moved to minimize the significance of the latest ruling, saying it would not change the trajectory of the case. Murphy said the decision does not affect the substance of the legal dispute and that Jolie anticipates prevailing at next year’s trial, allowing the family to finally concentrate on recovery and moving forward.
