Adnan Kivan

Kivan was born in Syria on December 1, 1962, and grew up in the town of Tafas in Daraa Governorate in southern Syria.⁠[1][2]

On August 24, 1980, Kivan arrived in Ukraine as a student to study at the University of Food Technology in Odesa; he later recalled that his technical studies led him into the metals business.⁠[3][2][3]

In 1986 Kivan set up a company that mediated negotiations between the USSR and its Arab debtor countries; by his own account the company earned a commission of 1.5 to 7 percent on each debt-settlement deal, and by 1990 he had made almost $60 million.⁠[4][4][4]

He then traded metals, selling to Egypt, Syria, Africa, China and elsewhere; several sources agree that after the collapse of the Soviet Union he made his first big profits trading scrap metal. Throughout the 1990s he steadily accumulated property in Odesa and built a hotel.⁠[3][2][2]

Kivan financed the construction of a mosque and Arab cultural center in Odesa, which opened in June 2001 and was presented as “a gift to Odesa citizens.”⁠[2][5]

In 2005 Kivan founded the construction-project development company Діана-Плюс, in 2006 he set up the construction company Interinvestbud, after which Kadorr Group took shape, and in 2017 he founded the agricultural company Kadorr Grain of Ukraine. The founding year of Kadorr Group is given as either 2005 or 2010. The group’s name, KADORR, is formed from the initials of his and his wife’s and children’s names.⁠[6][4][4][2][7]

Kadorr Group develops residential and commercial projects, mainly in Odesa, including developments on the shoreline; its high-rise apartment blocks have long been criticized by local activists for blocking sea views and spoiling Odesa’s historic skyline, and the disputes have also gone to court. The editor of a local Odesa news site said Kivan’s developments were relatively affordable and that he had not sold apartments and then failed to finish construction, though some of the buildings had quality problems.⁠[5][5][2][2][2]

Kivan owned Channel 7, one of the main local TV stations in Odesa. In 2015, together with other prominent locals, he set up a fund called “For Odesa’s Benefit” to finance then-Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili; he had feuded on and off with Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov since the 1990s. Media linked to the mayor claimed that he had received seaside land plots in exchange for building a hospital but had not kept his side of the bargain, while Channel 7 argued that the mayor was seeking leverage to seize a stake in Kadorr.⁠[5][2][2][2][2]

In November 2017 the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) searched Kadorr’s offices, seizing millions of hryvnias in cash and more than 100 company stamps; law enforcement claimed that the company took cash payments and did not record its earnings from property sales, and that the money went to the fugitive former lawmaker Igor Markov and was partly used to finance Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas. The day after the searches, Kivan called the allegations “nonsense” and “blasphemy” on Channel 7, saying the company owned more than 50 firms, each with its own stamp, and that his accountants and lawyers could account for every payment. In March 2018 an SBU spokeswoman could not immediately answer a question about the status of the investigation.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][5]

Kivan became interested after seeing an online advertisement from Mohammad Zahoor offering Kyiv Post for sale; in February he flew to Kyiv during a winter storm and agreed the deal with Zahoor in a single meeting, at a price both sides put at more than $3.5 million. The deal closed on March 21, 2018, making Kivan the third owner of the English-language newspaper founded in 1995, after Jed SundenJed SundenJed Sunden is an American publisher and media entrepreneur who founded the Ukrainian English-language newspaper Kyiv Post in Kyiv in 1995 and built on it to create KP Media, whose holdings included the weekly Korrespondent, korrespondent.net and bigmir.net; he sold the Kyiv Post in 2009 and his stake in KP Media in 2011. Since 2024 he has run the American Ukraine PAC in the United States, raising money for members of Congress who support Ukraine.Open the full entry and Zahoor.⁠[7][7][8][8]

Zahoor said Kivan had assured him that he valued the newspaper’s journalistic independence but reserved the right to hire his own team, and that he wanted the paper to cover the Syrian issue, which received little attention in Ukraine. In an interview on March 25, Kivan said he bought it because he considered Kyiv Post the most democratic newspaper in Ukraine and because its readers were mostly outside Ukraine and influential; he pledged not to be involved in its journalism, saying “such decisions are up to the editor,” and denied being aligned with Yulia Tymoshenko, Saakashvili or other politicians.⁠[5][5][3][3][3][3]

On March 27 Kivan met chief editor Brian Bonner at Kadorr’s headquarters and said he would retain Bonner at the head of the 40-member staff and respect editorial independence. In that interview he said: “Without independent journalism, you cannot get democracy… Investing in decent media resources, this is investments with God.”⁠[7][7]

As of March 2018, Kivan estimated that about 100,000 Odesa residents lived in apartment complexes he had developed; he said that once the 19 projects then under construction were completed they would house 70,000 more people, by which time he would have built 50 residential complexes and five shopping malls, all but two of the buildings in Odesa; one survey estimated that Kadorr Group had 12,500 employees. He also said he was considering investing about $440 million in agriculture.⁠[7][7][7][7]

After the acquisition, Kyiv Post stepped up its coverage of the conflict in Syria and of news from Odesa, and on June 18, 2018, it held a one-day conference titled “Bringing Peace to Syria & Ukraine,” at which Kivan gave a speech.⁠[9][9][9][9]

On October 14, 2021, Olena Rotari, a manager at Kivan’s Channel 7, announced on Facebook that she was recruiting staff for a Ukrainian-language edition of Kyiv Post; the newsroom said it had not been informed and saw this as interference in editorial policy, and journalists also opposed her appointment as deputy chief editor. On the morning of November 8, about 50 Kyiv Post employees were told they no longer had jobs and lost access to the website immediately after the meeting.⁠[10][10][11][10][10]

Kivan said this was not a closure but a “temporary suspension,” with plans to relaunch in four languages—Arabic, Ukrainian, Russian and English—and that dismissed staff would receive two months’ salary; the newsroom then issued a joint statement saying the publisher was getting rid of “inconvenient, honest and principled journalists.” Ukrainska Pravda editor-in-chief Sevgil Musaieva suggested the move was linked to pressure on Kivan from the President’s Office, and the president’s spokesman said the news came as a surprise to them as to everyone else; on November 9 Kivan said the President’s Office had not pressured the newspaper or him personally over editorial policy.⁠[10][10][10][12][12][13]

About 30 of the dismissed employees then started a new English-language outlet, The Kyiv Independent, with former deputy editor-in-chief Olga Rudenko as editor-in-chief.⁠[14][14][15]

On November 11, 2021, Kivan appointed Luc ChénierLuc ChénierLuc Chénier is a Canadian advertising and communications professional and entrepreneur long based in Kyiv, and the CEO of the Ukrainian English-language outlet Kyiv Post; he first ran the newspaper’s business from 2016 to 2018, returned as CEO after the November 2021 Kyiv Post shutdown controversy, and led its shift toward overseas readers as “Ukraine’s global voice.”Open the full entry, who had run Kyiv Post’s business from 2016 to 2018, as CEO again; he told a news agency that investments in media are “investments that are pleasing to God,” and that Kyiv Post had no list of untouchable people but any criticism must be justified. On December 8 Kyiv Post resumed daily online publication and dropped paid access. On December 24 Bohdan NahayloBohdan NahayloBohdan Nahaylo is a British-born journalist of Ukrainian descent, an author and a former United Nations official who has long studied the Soviet nationalities question and Ukrainian politics; he headed Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian Service from 1989 to 1991 and has been chief editor of the Ukrainian English-language outlet Kyiv Post since December 2021.Open the full entry became acting chief editor, and Kivan, as publisher, expressed full confidence in him.⁠[16][16][16][13][13][17][17]

According to a Ukrainian corporate database, Businessgroup LLC, the company that publishes Kyiv Post, was 60 percent owned by Kivan, with the remaining 40 percent held by one of his partners in other projects; the company lost about UAH 6.65 million in 2019 and about UAH 10.91 million in 2020.⁠[13][13]

Kadorr Group announced on October 28, 2024, that Kivan had died that day at the age of 61, without specifying the cause of death; Kyiv Post’s first-anniversary editorial gave the date of his death as October 27. In its tribute, the Kyiv Post newsroom said he had reshaped and rebranded the newspaper.⁠[18][15][19][20]

After his death, ownership of Kyiv Post passed to his son, Ruslan KivanRuslan KivanRuslan Kivan is the head of Kadorr Group, a real estate and investment group based in Odesa, Ukraine, and the owner and publisher of the English-language outlet Kyiv Post; he took over the family business and the newspaper after his father, Kadorr Group founder Adnan Kivan, died in October 2024.Open the full entry.⁠[8]

Kadorr Group: Official website: https://kadorrgroup.com/en/ (opens in a new window).⁠[21]

Kyiv Post: Official website: https://www.kyivpost.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]