Kyiv Post stories about Adnan Kivan:
July 6, 2018 — Adnan Kivan: Giving thanks for those nations that are helping Syria
March 30, 2018 — New Kyiv Post publisher Adnan Kivan: ‘Without independent journalism you cannot get democracy’
March 26, 2018 — Brian Bonner: Take the multiple choice quiz about Kyiv Post’s new owner
March 23, 2018 — Q&A with Mohammad Zahoor: Adnan Kivan ‘is the right buyer’ for Kyiv Post.
March 23, 2018 — Speculation is rife over Adnan Kivan’s political links
March 21, 2018 –– Zahoor sells Kyiv Post for at least $3.5 million to Adnan Kivan, Syrian millionaire in Odesa
Kyiv Post publisher Mohammad Zahoor sold the newspaper on March 21 to Syrian businessman Adnan Kivan.
What do we know about the new owner?
For one thing, wild rumors and accusations far outnumber confirmed facts about the 56-year-old construction magnate.
The unsubstantiated claims about Kivan read like a biography of a supervillain. Although many of the rumors appear patently untrue, they suggest a businessman whose activities have proven controversial.
“It’s nearly impossible to distinguish truths from half-truths when it comes to Kivan,” said Volodymyr Kurennoy, a former member of parliament from Odesa.
Business start
Born in Syria in 1962, Kivan grew up in Tafas town in Daraa Governorate in southern Syria — a location that appears in records of a company belonging to the Kivan family.
In a 2004 interview with Al Jazeera Arabic, Kivan shared details of his youth, calling himself a “worker” from a village in the south of Syria. Kivan came to Odesa around 1980 to study at the University of Food Technology, according to an archived version of his website from the mid‑2000s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he quickly became one of the richest men in the city.
Several sources agree that Kivan made his first big profits after the Soviet collapse by trading scrap metal — perhaps with some Syrian financing.
“His first money hardly came from Ukraine, but rather from Syria,” said Kurrennoy, the former deputy. “He started in Odesa through close, cooperative business with [Sergey] Kivalov,” an Odesa power broker and current member of parliament with the Opposition Bloc party.
Kivalov and Kivan cooperated on projects until Kivan “felt that he could develop himself independently,” said one Odesa political observer, who declined to be quoted by name, citing security concerns.
Throughout the 1990s, Kivan began to accumulate more property in Odesa, building a hotel before founding his KADORR real estate group in 2005.
Besides KADORR Group, the Kivan family — Adnan, his brothers Ibrahim and Mouamar, son Ruslan and wife Olga — own a network of dozens of companies registered in Odesa and Kyiv that operate in construction, investment and grain exports — Blago, Almatin, Almajid, Al-Karim, to name a few.
The Kivans also own companies incorporated in the United Kingdom and Panama. One of them, an offshore K’O British Construction Company S.A, was listed in the Panama Papers, a massive leak from the database of a Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca.
Political connections
A source in Kyiv’s diplomatic community referred to Kivan as relatively unknown outside of Odesa. The same source referenced murky 1990s ties to the late Odesa underworld authority Aleksandr Angert. The two allegedly fell out over a deal involving a hotel. One Odesa political observer told the Kyiv Post that Kivan survived by befriending then-President Leonid Kuchma and then-Odesa Mayor Ruslan Bodelan, and by also reaching out to the Syrian political establishment.
The Ukrainian authorities “were strengthening ties with Syria at the time, and Kivan proved himself useful,” the source said, citing fear of retribution as a reason for anonymity.
A supposed transcript of a July 2000 conversation from a tape secretly recorded by Kuchma’s bodyguard supports this theory. In the transcript, Kuchma and Bodelan are recorded referring to Kivan in the context of a conversation about “working with Syria in a full measure” on a deal involving tank sales. At the time, Kivan was building a mosque and Arab cultural center in Odesa. The complex opened in June 2001 and has been a home to the Islamic organization Peace, established by the Kivan family.
Syrian ties
Kivan comes from a Sunni Muslim family, in contrast to Syria’s ruling Alawite minority. However, news reports in Ukraine claim that the Kivans were close to the Syrian leadership thanks to their ties to Abdul Halim Khaddam, a Sunni and confidante of former President Hafez Assad.
Starting in the 1970s, Khaddam served as Syria’s foreign minister and vice president, before resigning in 2005 and going into exile in France. Since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, the politician has remained a sharp critic of Syria’s current president, Bashar al-Assad.
And yet, according to former vice president’s son, Jihad Khaddam, the real story of their ties to Kivan differs significantly. His family first learned about Kivan in 2010, a year before the Syrian revolution.
They have never met him, but relate positively to him.
“I know that he came many times to meet with the coalition of the [Syrian] opposition in Turkey and he is a supporter of the opposition,” Jihad Khaddam told the Kyiv Post.
Kivan has also faced accusations of involvement in the Syrian Civil War. One journalist, who has investigated the matter but declined to be identified, told the Kyiv Post that “top commanders of the Free Syrian Army have come to see him in Odesa to rest and recover.”
Fighting the law
Kivan’s developments have long been a lightning rod for controversy in Odesa, with activists (and numerous court filings) accusing the developer of blocking seaside views with towering apartment blocks and of blotting out Odesa’s 18th century skyline. Others have drawn attention to his relationship with Kivalov, implying that his habit of receiving coveted land concessions is a result of political connections.
But since the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, which ended Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency, Kivan’s political position in Odesa has worsened.
Feud with Odesa mayor
Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov and Kivan have feuded on-and-off since at least the 1990s, but the issue has come to a head in recent years. With other prominent locals, Kivan set up a fund in 2015 called “For Odesa’s Benefit,” aimed at financing then-Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili. His efforts to support Saakashvili reportedly antagonized Trukhanov, and may have backfired after the Odesa governor was ousted by President Petro Poroshenko in November 2016.
Media outlets associated with the Odesa mayor claimed Kivan received preferential seaside land plots in exchange for agreeing to build a “European hospital” in the city, but never fulfilled his end of the bargain. Kivan’s Channel 7 argued that Trukhanov was trying to gain leverage as part of a bid to seize a stake in Kadorr.
Yevgenia Genova, editor of Odesa’s Izbirkom news site, says that media under Trukhanov’s de facto control “started a campaign of slander” against Kivan, accusing him of supporting terrorism, smuggling arms and narcotics. Now, however, Genova believes Kivan’s conflict with Trukhanov is over because the “media war” ended a few months ago and Kivan again received land plots.
But that wasn’t Kivan’s last political clash. In September 2017, member of parliament Dmytro Linko from Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party asked prosecutors to investigate the connection between Kivan and Igor Markov, a pro-Russian former member of parliament who fled Ukraine after the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014 and has been wanted by Ukrainian authorities for rigging elections in Odesa in 2013.
“Igor Markov and his brother Oleg stole a land plot from an old spa resort, and Kivan was building on it. The connection is obvious,” Linko told the Kyiv Post.
Shortly after that, in November, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) searched Kadorr’s offices, seizing millions of hryvnia in cash and more than 100 company stamps. Law enforcement claimed that Kadorr received payments in cash and didn’t post its earnings from sold property in its accounts. The money allegedly went to Markov, who partially spent it on financing Russian-backed separatists that have been fighting Ukraine’s government forces in the Donbas.
Kivan dismissed allegations of ties with Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk as “nonsense” and “blasphemy,” in a statement to his Channel 7 the day after the raids. He said that stacks of cash and dozens of stamps weren’t unusual in Ukraine’s business world. “We own over 50 companies, and each has its stamp,” he explained in an interview to Channel 7. “My accountants and lawyers are ready to account for every stamp, every document, every kopeck that was found.”
This time, the controversy appeared to be linked to politics, and not business.
“It was not connected with his opposition to the city mayor. It was connected with pressure on Saakashvili’s people and those who financed him,” said Ruslan Forostyak, an adviser to Odesa’s National Police division. “As far as I can see, the war between Truhanov and [Kivan] has ended.”
Genova suggests that, despite many of the claims against Kivan, the issue is not one-sided. She notes that some of his high-rises have quality issues and break with the city’s architectural style. But there is also a positive side.
Kivan’s developments are affordable. And unlike many developers, he hasn’t sold apartments in a development and then failed to finish construction.
“Kivan hasn’t ripped anyone off,” she says. “Everything is built and put into use on time. There’s the issue of quality. But for many, it’s a way to get an apartment.”
