Even when business is bad, life is good for Zahoor in Ukraine

Pakistan’s most famous businessman in Ukraine, by far, is Mohammad Zahoor. He is the owner of the ISTIL Group of companies who came to Ukraine in 1974 as a university student and then went on to a highly successful career in metallurgy – selling a steel plant in Donetsk at the peak of the market in 2008 for nearly $1 billion.

Zahoor, along the way, also owned the Kyiv Post for nine years before selling it on March 21, 2018, to Odesa businessman Adnan Kivan, the construction magnate from Syria. Neither man bought the English-language newspaper, in business since 1995, to make money. Instead, they both saw it as an important voice of independent journalism to keep alive financially.

While Zahoor is a United Kingdom citizen, the married father of four children (his wife is singer-actress Kamaliya), he keeps up his personal ties to Pakistan, the homeland he visits regularly. In March, he returned from a trip to Islamabad, Lahore and his native Karachi, the economic engine of Pakistan. He’s planning to go with friends on an excursion to the northern mountains in September when his youngest children are back in school. His fascination stems partly because it’s home to the “the longest-living people,” including centenarians.

He’s also a supporter of all things Pakistan in Ukraine. But a celebration of the national holiday Pakistan Day has been another victim of the coronavirus. Scheduled for March 23 in the Hilton Kyiv, it had to be canceled as Ukraine went into quarantine because of the deadly disease that’s caused a global pandemic killing nearly 10,000 people so far. Instead, Pakistanis and invited guests will have a low-key celebration at the Pakistani Embassy in Kyiv.

Also rescheduled is Zahoor’s pet project: The 9^th annual YUNA, or Yearly Ukraine National Awards, a show that honors Ukraine’s best musicians. It had been scheduled for March 24, but will take place in late May or early June.

Zahoor’s string of bad luck extends to business as well. He is the owner of a long-empty landmark hotel near Zoloti Vorota. He’s calling it the Renaissance Hotel, but he’s still looking for an investor who can turn the partially finished project into a reality. He had high hopes for legalized gambling in hotels as a moneymaker, but now says it appears that the legislation working its way through the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, is rigged for insiders to benefit. He also says the casino licensing fee of $6 million is exorbitant.

He also owns the former Kinopanorama movie theater in the city center but needs investors there too.

Moreover, Zahoor lost business assets in the eastern Donbas after Russia invaded in 2014 and launched its ongoing war. He’s also had unhappy business ventures in digital TV and other projects.

But he continues to own a profitable plastics manufacturer in Obukhiv and a business center called Rialto in Kyiv, among other valuable assets. His projects outside the country, including in renewable energy, “are doing good,” he said.

And people shouldn’t take up a collection for him: The 64-year-old’s fortune was estimated last year by Focus magazine at roughly $200 million.

Still, Zahoor said, disappointment with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Cabinet reshuffle and the spread of the novel coronavirus will deliver a double blow to Ukraine’s economy for some time to come.

“Now, since the reshuffle of the government and the coronavirus, it’s made things worse. Ukraine is once again out of the scope of the investors.”

Yet the exceedingly calm Zahoor is also still living the life of his dreams. He and his wife, Kamaliya, and their two twin 6-year-old daughters, Arabella and Mirabella, are based in Ukraine. But they travel extensively to London, Dubai and various cities in Pakistan, where Zahoor’s 88-year-old mother and several relatives still live, including two brothers and two sisters. Another brother died 30 years ago. He has two adult children, Arman and Tanya, from a previous marriage.

He also keeps faith that Zelensky will be able to turn Ukraine around and make it attractive to investors again.

“I know Zelensky and some of his other people. They are clean people and are working for the country,” he says.

But he admits to being puzzled by the abrupt dismissal of ex-Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk’s government in March.

“Maybe there is a reason behind the reshuffling of the government which we don’t know,” Zahoor said. “I would have given them some more time.”