Forbes Report 04.20.2022: President Zelensky Is Not A Billionaire. So How Much Is He Worth? } Matt Durot Forbes Staff

 

The show asks: What if a common man were president of Ukraine? 

He might not be expected to maintain his incorruptibility in the face of rampant cronyism, but maybe, just maybe, he could.

In 2003, Kvartal 95 was established as an independent production company, making TV shows and films for Ukrainian and Russian-speaking audiences. 

• Kvartal 95 produced and owns the Servant of the People series, a popular political comedy starring Zelensky as a Ukrainian high school teacher who is elected president. 
• Netflix, which previously streamed the show between 2017 and 2021, snapped up the rights again in March. 
• With estimated revenues of $30 million annually, Forbes Ukraine values Zelensky’s stake at $11 million.

The project got a boost when Zelenskiy won Ukraine’s Dancing With the Stars in 2006, performing with his professional partner, Alena Shoptenko. She is still one of the 196 people he follows on Instagram. (He has 13.4 million followers.) Highlights included a jive to Blue Suede Shoes, with Zelenskiy giving it the full pink-satin-jumpsuited Elvis, a pencil moustache for a tango to Big Spender, a blindfolded rumba to Sting’s The Shape of My Heart and a quirky American smooth dressed as Charlie Chaplin. His performances were energetic and all-in – and he was super-fit. This was – and is – clearly important to him: until he became president, he would regularly post videos on social media from the gym, or swimming, or jogging in New York.

His screen work grew. In 2008, he played Igor, a Russian dentist living in New York, in Love in the Big City. Igor is one of three friends suddenly struck impotent, who must then find the path to true love in order to regain their virility. (It is easy to react disparagingly to this, but the film made $9m at the box office and it is fair to say that Steve Carell’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin is not too dissimilar in tone.)

Two sequels followed. In Office Romance: Our Time (2011), he played Anatoly, a financial analyst with a difficult boss. In trying to get promoted, he ends up falling in love with her, after many shenanigans involving a cable car, a motorbike and other, er, vehicles for physical comedy . . .

Forbes Report 04.20.2022: President Zelensky Is Not A Billionaire. So How Much Is He Worth? } Matt Durot Forbes Staff

 The Russian invasion has hit Ukraine’s billionaires hard. According to Forbes’ 36th annual World’s Billionaires List, there are only seven left in the country and Zelensky is not one of them (nor is former president and chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko, who dropped from the rankings this year).

But unlike his predecessor, Zelensky never was a billionaire. He’s currently worth roughly $20 million, based on reporting by Forbes Ukraine. Additional reporting by Forbes US puts that number at less than $30 million.

President Zelensky Is Not A Billionaire. 

So How Much Is He Worth?

Matt DurotForbes Staff  

Forbes | 2022-04-20

. . .His main asset: an estimated 25% stake in Kvartal 95, a group of companies that produce humorous shows, which he transferred to his partners after being elected president, though he’ll likely regain his shares after leaving office. 

• Kvartal 95 produced and owns the Servant of the People series, a popular political comedy starring Zelensky as a Ukrainian high school teacher who is elected president. 
• Netflix, which previously streamed the show between 2017 and 2021, snapped up the rights again in March. With estimated revenues of $30 million annually, Forbes Ukraine values Zelensky’s stake at $11 million.

While he does own a flat in one of Ukraine’s most expensive apartment buildings in the center of Kyiv, it’s relatively modest by Western standards. 

• Forbes estimates Zelensky’s entire real estate portfolio is worth $4 million, including two more wholly owned apartments, two that he co-owns, a single commercial property and five parking spaces. 
• Zelensky did own a $4.6 million villa in Forte dei Marmi, Italy as of December 2019, according to the most recent filing by his holding company. He apparently sold it during 2020 (it had shown up in his declarations for 2018 and 2019 but not 2020) along with a small plot of land and 5 hotel rooms in Georgia (popular upper-middle-class investments in Ukraine). 
• The cash from these sales was declared and is included in Forbes’ estimate, but because the sum is less than the estimated value of the real estate, it is possible Zelensky remains a de facto beneficiary or the cash is invested

Servant of the People (Ukrainian: Слуга народу, romanized: Sluha narodu, Russian: Слуга народа, romanized: Sluga naroda), sometimes also known as Servant of the Nation, is a Ukrainian political satire comedy television series created and produced by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who stars as Vasily Petrovych Goloborodko, a high-school history teacher in his thirties who is unexpectedly elected President of Ukraine after a viral video filmed by one of his students shows him making a profane rant against government corruption in his country.^[1][2][3] 

The series ran for three seasons from 2015 to 2019, and a film adaptation was released in 2016.^[4]
The series was produced by Kvartal 95, which was founded by Zelenskyy.^[5] 

It would become much more involved in Ukraine's actual politics; in 2018, a political party named after the television series was registered,^[6] and Zelenskyy was elected president of Ukraine in 2019.^[7]