Pakistani Steel Mill Engineer-Turned-Oligarch Shapes Ukrainian Politics

[Riaz Haq]

Oligarchs have shaped politics in post-Soviet Russia and other former Soviet republics including The Ukraine since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. One such oligarch is Karachi-born Pakistani Ukrainian Mohammad Zahoor, a member of growing Pakistani diaspora which is already the world's 7th largest. He owns Kyiv Post newspaper which is widely believed to have led the campaign to topple pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Mohammad and Kamaliya Zahoor

In 1974, Zahoor left Karachi, Pakistan, for the Soviet Union to study metallurgy in Donetsk in the Ukraine. Though he moved back with his Russian wife to work at Pakistan Steel Mills plant in Karachi, Pakistan upon graduation but he didn’t stay there long.

“Having a Russian wife limited my career development there,” he told Newsweek. “The secret services were also very active during the ’80s, and I thought it better to leave.” He moved to Moscow to work for a Pakistani steel company in the late ’80s, and hasn’t looked back since

He learned Russian and metallurgy well. Then he eventually found a way to apply those skills in Ukraine, one of the world’s top 10 steel-exporting nations. Zahoor also displayed a talent for knowing when to get out of a business, as he did in 2008 by selling his Donetsk steel mill for a top-drawer price of $1 billion, according to Kyiv Post. He has since invested in media and real estate businesses.

Zahoor divorced his first wife to marry Kamaliya (born as Natalya Shmarenkova in 1977) in 2003. Kamaliya won Mrs. World title in 2008. She is involved in charitable work in both Ukraine and Pakistan. They live in a mansion designed to resemble Dubai’s hotel Burj al-Arab in the suburbs of Kyiv. The couple had twin daughters last year. Zahoor has two grown children, Arman and Tanya, from his previous marriage.

Zahoor and Kamaliya have starred in a Fox Entertainment reality show "Meet the Russians". Kamaliya has a singing career with hit singles like "Crazy In My Heart," "Rising Up," and "Butterflies," and she is also famous for singing duets with Russian pop star Philipp Kirkorov.

Here's a Kamaliya music and dance video:


Kamaliya - Butterflies (Fabinho DVJ & DJ Antoine vs. Mad Mark R... from Fabinho DVJ on Vimeo.


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[Riaz Haq]

On September 19 next week, the Kyiv Post will complete 20 years of existence, 20 years in which this tenacious newsweekly with a print circulation of little more than 15,000 has consistently scrapped and punched above its weight.

This is in part because it publishes in English, making it the source of first resort for news on Ukraine for embassies in Kiev and chanceries around the world, as well as for any expat doing business in this country of simpatico citizens and venal officialdom.

The other element of its success has been its consistent, and cussed, independence. The paper tells it arrow-straight in a part of the world where much of the media twists the news to suit the interests of oligarch owners and corrupt politicians.

By contrast, the record shows that the Kyiv Post gets the story right most of the time; and apart from a few instances of turbulence between owner and editors, the quality of its journalism is not inferior to any reputable publication in the West. Staid it may be on occasion, but it’s never dodgy or unreliable.

* * *

I am in Koncha-Zaspa, a zippy 30-minute drive south of Kiev in a daredevil local journalist’s car. This is a wooded suburb of the capital, dotted with mansions of questionable taste, some grotesque.

By the standards of the zip code, Mohammad Zahoor’s pile is restrained, though it could hardly be called understated. The security is relaxed — one man at the gate who waves us through, another who ushers us to a parking spot; and as we descend from our car, a tall Pakistani man, about 6-foot-2, approaches us. It’s Zahoor, Ukraine’s richest expat, a “minigarch” worth about $1 billion (some say), and the owner of the Kyiv Post.

Zahoor is 60 years old, though his jet-black hair isn’t a day older than 30. His physique suggests regular trips to the gym. He is a virile chap, with two little toddlers to prove it. They’re twins — Arabella and Mirabella — his daughters with his wife Kamaliya, a bombshell blonde who was Mrs. World in 2008, and is today a singer of some repute not just in Ukraine but in those parts of Europe where the pop culture is unfussy.

We banter with Zahoor’s twins for a while before they’re whisked off by a posse of nannies (I count four). A housekeeper brings us chai made in the way of the Indian subcontinent, strong brick-red tea with lots of milk and sugar. After a few sips — the tea is hot, and we slurp noisily — Zahoor starts to reminisce. His speech is languid, his accent a mix of Pakistan and Britain. “You want to know my story?” he asks.

Men of steel

The owner of the Kyiv Post arrived in Moscow in 1974 on an engineering scholarship. He’d been at college in Karachi, and when he learned of his selection by the Soviet education ministry his parents were on a pilgrimage to Mecca, so he left without telling them. He was one of 42 students flown in from Pakistan: 14 stayed in Moscow, 14 went to St. Petersburg, and 14 unlucky ones — among them Zahoor — were put on a train to Donetsk, a shabby, polluted industrial backwater in then-eastern Soviet Ukraine. Showing early acumen, he changed $40 on the black market before embarking on the 32-hour journey. “I’m from Pakistan. I wouldn’t sell my dollars at the official rate!”

Zahoor studied engineering and steel-making at Donetsk, turning in a thesis on the rolling plant at the Donetsk Steel Mill in 1980. “Sixteen years later I bought that mill,” he says, with obvious — but not off-putting — satisfaction. He returned to Pakistan shortly after with a Russian wife, and worked for Pakistan Steel. “I was a safety engineer. We translated Russian safety manuals into English.”


http://www.politico.eu/article/pakistan-kiev-kyiv-post-oligarch-new...

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan's Mohammad Zahoor, the former publisher of Kyiv Post -- an English newspaper -- was once Ukraine's richest expat. His newspaper had a print circulation of little more than 15,000 and was reputed for being independent and straight.

https://www.indiatoday.in/world/russia-ukraine-war/story/pakistan-m...


He is now the owner and chairman of ISTIL Group. In 2021, in an interview with Kyiv Post, he shared his views about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He said, "I have seen that the International Monetary Fund isn’t lending the money. I see the debt is increasing. Basically, I think we are still stuck with the legal system, the corruption in the legal system... Instead of having all these G7 meetings, etc., the government and parliament should pay more attention to passing laws not the slippery laws to fool the West that we are doing something. The cold shoulder that Zelensky was given during the American visit is a sign that not everybody is buying what they’re being told."

"If you look at the words of Zelensky, he’s not happy. Before, he was pro-West. Now he’s complaining. Now it’s 'we have to do it ourselves. The West is not going to help us.' If you do good things, they will help you. But just because you’re being haunted by the Russians, you expect everyone to do everything for you, but you are not going to do anything else except play 'a victimized country',” he said.

Sixty-six-year-old Mohammad Zahoor arrived in Moscow in 1974 on an engineering scholarship. He attended college in Pakistan's Karachi and was later selected by the Soviet education ministry, following which he left home without telling his parents -- who were on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

However, he was one of the 14 unlucky students out of the 42 who were flown in from Pakistan to be sent to Donetsk -- now one of the rebel Ukrainian regions recognised as independent by Russian President Vladimir Putin, ahead of the war on Ukraine.

He studied engineering and steel-making at Donetsk and wrote a thesis on the rolling plant at the Donetsk Steel Mill in 1980 - which he bought after 16 years.



Later, he returned to Pakistan with his Russian wife and worked for Pakistan Steel. “I was a safety engineer. We translated Russian safety manuals into English,” he said.

His return to Pakistan was at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which raised doubts about his Russian wife. He was questioned about letters from Russia at his Pakistan residence. And soon it was made clear that his professional prospects were bleak if he had to stay married to his wife.

He left for Moscow in 1987 and started working for a Pakistani trading company and helped his employers buy Russian steel at $100 a ton to sell it abroad for $250. “We bought 10,000 tons in all — $1.5 million in profit,” he said.

About three years later, in the 1990s, he started his own business in partnership with a Thai steelmaker, making a profit of $40-50 million per annum. In 1996, he bought the Donetsk mill where he studied as a student. He turned the ``shambolic post-Soviet plant into a state-of-the-art steel mill'.

“It was President [Leonid] Kuchma’s time. Dinosaurs could just roll up and take your business away,” he said, talking about the lawless days back then. One of those he named was Rinat Akhmetov, who tried that but Zahoor fought back, a case that the Kyiv Post took up. However, Zahoor made a deal with another oligarch, Viktor Nusenkis, to keep Akhmetov at bay, but ceded 90 per cent of the plant.

“I continued in steel until 2008, buying mills in the US, the UK, and Serbia, and building a mill in Dubai. We had two piers in Odessa port,” he said.

[Riaz Haq]

Editor’s Note: The following is a Q&A with Mohammad Zahoor, owner of the ISTIL Group of companies and publisher of the Kyiv Post from 2009- 2018. He is a British citizen who is a native of Pakistan. He is married to singer-actress Kamaliya and has four children, including twin eight-year-old daughters. Zahoor spoke to Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner on Sept. 15, 2021, in his Kyiv office.

https://www.kyivpost.com/business/20-questions-with-mohammad-zahoor...

Kyiv Post: How do you spend your time?

Mohammad Zahoor: I’m semi-retired and just come to the office to have some meetings. I’m mostly looking after my two kids, who just turned eight. I’m enjoying happy family life. During this period of 1.5 years (during the coronavirus pandemic), the business was not flourishing, of course, so at least we’ve found some harmony at home.

KP: When was the last time you were in Pakistan?

MZ: I was in Pakistan in February after the death of my sister-in-law, my brother’s wife, who died of COVID-19.

KP: What’s the potential for growth in Ukraine-Pakistan trade?



MZ: Ukraine has a lot to deliver to Pakistan, including agricultural products, besides the defense industry stuff. There’s a lot of potential for Ukraine to import, the textile, the leather goods, the surgery instruments, the sports goods and the fruits, mangoes, especially…from the Pakistani side, I don’t think it will go into billions.

KP: When can I check into your unopened hotel on Zoloti Vorota?

MZ: I’m still looking for a partner to invest with me in the hotel and a casino.

KP: What are the prospects for the newly legalized gambling in Ukraine?



MZ: Ukraine doesn’t have these high rollers (big gamblers).

KP: Why don’t you just spend down your net worth to get the hotel finished?

MZ: I don’t want any more headaches.

KP: What’s happening with the Kinopanorama building in the center of Kyiv?

MZ: The day before yesterday, we got this new ‘present’ that the Kinopanorama is a ‘cultural heritage’ so we cannot reconstruct it. So we have to keep it in the same way, which is miserable, this is a 1958 building, which is the Communist era. Now, there’s a cinema that is closed. It’s empty. We wanted to make it a place for people because the city has a shortage of event halls. We ourselves, when we want to do an event, all the places are gone.

KP: So, you own two of the best properties in town that are empty?

MZ: Yes.

KP: Did you get any compensation for your stolen assets in the Kremlin-occupied Donbas?

MZ: No.

KP: Do you expect any?

MZ: No.

KP: YUNA, the annual music awards program you sponsor, got back on track this year after a year off from the coronavirus. All good?

MZ: What we expected this year when we were allowed to bring only 50% of the people to the venue, the government would give us a 50% discount on the rent of the Palace of Ukraine. We were never compensated.



KP: Did you buy any businesses or property in the last year?

MZ: No

KP: Did you sell anything?

MZ: No.

KP: Are you still optimistic about President Volodymyr Zelensky?

MZ: I have seen that the International Monetary Fund isn’t lending the money. I see the debt is increasing. Basically, I think we are still stuck with the legal system, the corruption in the legal system…Instead of having all these G7 meetings, etc., the government and parliament should pay more attention to passing laws – not the slippery laws – to fool the West that we are doing something. The cold shoulder that Zelensky was given during the American visit is a sign that not everybody is buying what they’re being told. The rhetoric has changed. If you look at the words of Zelensky, he’s not happy. Before, he was pro-West. Now he’s complaining. Now it’s “we have to do it ourselves. The West is not going to help us.” If you do good things, they will help you. But just because you’re being haunted by the Russians, you expect everyone to do everything for you, but you are not going to do anything else except play “a victimized country.”

KP: Not good?

MZ: I still think he is for the good of this country. In countries like Ukraine, where the system is not in place, one person can damage a lot. And one person cannot build everything. I think while Zelensky’s intentions are good, he’s the only one in the whole lot. Most of the people around him, we don’t see what they are doing, we don’t see anything moving. They are “ministers of satisfaction” who will not oppose you. I would rather have people stand up and tell me “this is wrong.” One has to have the appetite to listen to criticism and do the right things. 

KP: Kamaliya is pro-Zelensky?

MZ: She is totally pro-Zelensky. We are all pro-Zelensky. I haven’t seen anything negative about Zelensky. It’s similar to Pakistan. There’s nothing wrong about Prime Minister Imran Khan. He’s a very clean person, very genuine and very sincere. But the team there is one of the worst ones. Neither here nor there can one sincere person change the system

KP: Last year, where did you spend your time? 

MZ: 40% in Ukraine. Almost none in Pakistan. London and Dubai – 30% and 30%.

KP: It’s a good life.

MZ: I’m not complaining.

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistani billionaire from Kyiv urges world to support Ukraine

https://www.arabnews.com/node/2038856/world

Mohammad Zahoor owns real estate and steel businesses in conflict-ridden nation

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani billionaire, who before the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a major figure in the Ukrainian media and steel industries, has called on the international community to support Kyiv, as Russian forces step up attacks on cities and nuclear facilities.

Born in the Pakistani megapolis Karachi in 1955, Mohammad Zahoor was 19 when he traveled to Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union, to study metallurgy on a Pakistan steel mills scholarship. After completing his master’s degree, he returned to his home country to work in the steel sector.

Years later, as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics fell apart, and Ukraine became an independent state in 1991, Zahoor went back to participate in the country’s transition into a capitalist economy. He invested in the steel sector and established ISTIL Group, a conglomerate operating in real estate, manufacturing, and coal enrichment.

He also became involved in Ukraine’s media and entertainment scene, and in 2009 bought Kyiv Post, the oldest English-language newspaper in Ukraine, which he owned for nearly a decade, gaining the title of “Pakistani press prince of Kyiv.”

Fluent in the region’s languages and familiar with its politics, the billionaire told Arab News in an exclusive interview why he was calling on the world to support Ukrainians in the war that began on Feb. 24, and which has forced an estimated 2 million people to flee the country in under two weeks.

“This is time, actually, for us not to keep quiet. We have to take sides,” Zahoor said.

“I am openly taking the side of Ukraine because after seeing (reports from) Western, Ukrainian and Russian media, I can see and decide who is telling the truth. This is the time actually for everyone to speak up for Ukraine otherwise every big country is going to swallow its next-door neighbor.”

Married to Kamaliya, the Ukrainian pop star and former Mrs. World beauty pageant titleholder, Zahoor has left Kyiv with their two daughters. His wife had joined them a few days after their departure because she initially wanted to stay in her country, but the situation had become increasingly dangerous.

“It’s more than 10 days that civilians (have been) bombarded; the nuclear plant has been targeted. I think we are in the worst crisis in the world since the Second World War,” Zahoor said.

He said the shelling of nuclear facilities by Russian forces posed a considerable danger to the world.

The Russians have reportedly captured Europe’s largest nuclear power plant after attacking it overnight Friday, which started at least one fire, raising widespread concerns that a meltdown happened and that the consequences would likely be much worse than Chernobyl.

“We are in the middle of Europe, in fact. If something happens to those nuclear power plants, and Ukraine has got 15 of those ...  The nuclear power plant which was shelled is six times more powerful than the Chernobyl plant. The Russian equipment, I must say, they are not very precise. So, they’re sending 10 rockets in order to get one to the destination.”

As international sanctions followed Russia’s invasion, aiming to cut Moscow off from the world’s financial arteries, Zahoor said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had called for the world’s intervention before the violence broke out.

“I think Europe has done much (less) than they should have done. Not only EU, but America and UK as well. They have supported all the way, first by words, then by sending those stinger or javelin missiles and that’s it,” he added.

Now, as sanctions are underway, the damage has reportedly already been done to the whole region. 

Zahoor said the war may have consequences for Russia similar to the fallout from the Soviet-Afghan war from 1979 to 1989, which drastically weakened the Russian military and economy. That defeat in Afghanistan was one of the major reasons for the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

“Ukraine is going to be the next Afghanistan for Russia,” he said. “I don’t know how many years they are going to be in Ukraine, but once they are out, they will be broken into pieces.”