The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to return assets, including a reported 1.5 tons of gold, to a businesswoman cleared in a smuggling case.

Charges against the flamboyant Antonina Babosyuk, head of the Altyn jewelry shop chain, were dropped in December due to changes in the law, but her assets are to remain seized in a related case, the criminal panel of the Supreme Court ruled.

The assets allegedly include 1.5 tons of Altyn’s produce, as well as a Kyrgyzstan passport of Babosyuk, who has a dual Russian-Kyrgyz citizenship. The defense promised to appeal.

Altyn, in operation since 1990 and with shops in Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the United Arab Emirates, was hit with smuggling charges in 2009, when the Federal Security Service accused it of undercutting prices through illegal imports brought in via Kazakhstan.

In at least one case, unmarked jewelry linked to Altyn crossed the Russian-Kazakhstan border in a horse-drawn cart trudging through the steppe, some media reported at the time.

Altyn representatives have denied the allegations and said the case was fabricated by business rivals.

Babosyuk – a 38-year-old platinum blonde whose smiling visage featured prominently in Altyn’s advertisement – eventually walked out on bail of 3 million rubles ($100,000) some months before the case against her and four others was closed.

None of the former suspects are charged in the ongoing case, also on smuggling charges, but the Altyn jewelry remains seized as evidence in the case.

Arrested assets often get stuck in bureaucratic limbo for years. In one of the odder cases, a Moscow businessman reported in 2010 that police asked him to provide 15 million rubles for a sting operation to expose a bribe-taking official, but never returned the money.

Legislative amendments from 2011 allowed returning assets to their owners before a criminal case is over, but only if it “won’t hinder the investigation.” It remained unclear on Tuesday how that applied to Babosyuk’s case.