Helsinki District Court has acquitted a man of avoiding tax by illegally importing some 235,000 litres of alcohol for customers in Finland.
The written verdict means prosecutors have 14 days to inform the court of their intention to appeal the verdict.
He had run a company selling alcohol and cigarettes to Finnish customers in Estonia and Latvia via the vironviina.com and balticbränncin.se websites.
Customers were given the choice of collecting the products from Tallinn or choosing a company to deliver them to Finland.
The firm was established in 2014, and by 2017 Finnish Customs had completed their investigation.
Customers self-importing booze
He had denied the charges, arguing that he was selling the products abroad and customers themselves were importing them.
His firm, Creative Alpha Solutions, paid tax in Estonia rather than Finland. He had said in his defence that it is not possible to ban online sales within the European Union.
A planned alcohol reform under the Juha Sipilä government left online selling outside its scope in 2018 because of political differences between the Centre and National Coalition parties.
That meant the principle of online sales of alcohol from other EU countries would be decided by the courts, rather than via new legislation.
Finnish law currently prohibits sales of alcohol stronger than 5.5 percent outside of state-owned Alko stores. Online sales and delivery services are not allowed, and there are restrictions on the times supermarkets can sell alcohol of less than 5.5 percent strength.