I think everybody fantasizes about what they’d do with a fortune of $1 billion. I certainly do.
The randy billionaire in me would relocate to a tropical island and start a world-class harem. The upstanding billionaire in me would be a philanthropist who lives modestly, buys newspapers starting with the Kyiv Post, supports orphans, gives generously to friends and relatives and has many children.
But alas, I have never come close to acquiring a fortune after decades as an ink-stained wretch. As a wise columnist I once worked with said: “Journalists don’t want to be millionaires, we just want to live like them.”
Fortunately, I was able to get an entertaining glimpse into how some mega-millionaires live by catching a sneak preview of the first two of nine episodes of the FOX TV reality series called “Meet the Russians,” which started airing in London on Sept. 25.
The show’s stars include my boss, Kyiv Post publisher Mohammad Zahoor, and his singer-actress wife, Kamaliya Zahoor. He is definitely not Russian, but rather a Pakistani who made his fortune in the Ukrainian steel industry. His wife of 10 years was born in Russia, but considers Kyiv to be her hometown.
If anybody thinks that I am going to commit career suicide by publicly criticizing my boss, they’re mistaken. Besides, the British tabloids have done so already, calling the Zahoors “weird” and superficial for their ostentatious spending habits. The London Daily Mail asked: “Are these the tackiest tycoons in Britain?”
Zahoor is from the “say-what-you-want-about-us-but-spell-our-names-correctly” school of publicity.
“I have not seen any episode, but our PR team in the UK is extremely happy with the exposure that Kamaliya has got,” Zahoor e-mailed me on Sept. 26. “Critical reviews are less than the positive ones, but even the negative has made her controversial and controversy in her case is even better as it increases the public interest. Right now she has got tens of TV interviews lined up which shows that media are very interested in her.”
So what will viewers learn about the Zahoors in the first two parts?
He’s spent $20 million so far on “Project Kamaliya,” boosting his wife’s career by bankrolling movies and videos. She is one of his biggest indulgences. (The Kyiv Post used to be one, but Zahoor this year told us to stand on our own two feet.)
“If Kamaliya had no talent, as a businessman I would have not put a single penny there and she’d be singing at home for me,” Zahoor says on camera.
“I want to be the biggest star in the whole of the world,” she says of her goal.
They have his and her private jets that they sometimes charter for flights to Birmingham, England, where one of Zahoor’s favorite curry restaurants is located. The one meal alone – including the roundtrip flight – probably costs more than anyone at the Kyiv Post makes in a year. (Not that I’m envious, of course.)
“How do you feel, like a big rock star?” he asks her in Russian on the plane.
“No, like a very rich woman,” she replies.
Zahoor has 17 cars and, when Kamaliya was looking for her own, a dealer brought a mini-showroom to their place in London. She settled on two luxury cars, including a $200,000 Bentley. They love flying to Monaco. They rent $2,400-a-night apartments. One bathroom had his and her glass-encased showers so they could watch each other. They have a yacht. She bathes in champagne – 35 bottles to fill the tub.
They have residences in several cities, including London, Moscow and Kyiv. Kamaliya loves shopping – no surprise there – and her English is pretty good. In one episode, Zahoor is driving her around London as she studies such English phrases as “Where is the fitting room?” “May I try it on?” and “What size is it?”
Zahoor jokes about her legendary spending: “The only place where Kamaliya doesn’t need any interpreter is Harrods.”
Her other love is animals: “I’m crazy about animals. I have a lot of animals. Five little dogs. Four big dogs. Three cats. One kakadu. One rabbit. One chinchilla…” And five horses, Zahoor reminds her. They show the cameras their opulent and brightly colored Kyiv mansion, decorated with portraits of them. She aims her gold-and-diamond shotgun with Zahoor sitting nearby as she jokingly threatens him: “If you find another woman, I can kill you.”
They clearly love each other, come across as likeable and are proud of their material success.
“He’s working a lot and sleeping a very short time,” Kamaliya says. “If you want to be rich and if you want to have a good life you must be working a lot.”
“I have no shame about it,” Zahoor says. “It’s something that I want to tell to everybody: That you could…earn that kind of money through your efforts, through your hard work. Luck is something from God and if God is graceful to you as he was with me, it is possible you would be sitting in my seat and have not two, but four jets, with you.”
I don’t like disagreeing with the boss, put plenty of people work hard and never get rich, nor do they aspire to be. One reason I’m not is that I certainly haven’t succeeded in writing as well as Zahoor did in steel. If I ever do, I hope to remember my late grandparents’ Depression-era admonition to not show off, to be humble and to remember those less for fortunate than I am.
It turns out that I and Zahoor, a generally agreeable boss who has nonetheless fired and rehired me twice in three years, inhabit different worlds, with the Kyiv Post being our only connection. That’s good enough for me.
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected].
