Tevfik Arif is the founder of the Bayrock Group, an international real estate development and investment company based in New York.
13 Facts About Tevfik Arif
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Tevfik Arif was born Tofik Arifov in an ethnic Turkish family in Dshambul, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.
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Tevfik Arif's family came to Kazakhstan from Meskhetia, Georgia after the ethnic Turkish Meskhetian community were deported by Joseph Stalin in 1944.
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Tevfik Arif served as the deputy director of its Department of Hotel Management.
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Tevfik Arif resigned from the ministry in 1991 and founded Speciality Chemicals Trading Company, an export-import business trading in rare metals, chrome, and raw materials which owned at Aktobe the Aktobe plant of chromium compounds from 1996 until 2016.
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Tevfik Arif then worked as an "agent on the ground" in Kazakhstan for Trans World Group, a natural resources company run by David and Simon Reuben.
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Tevfik Arif moved to Turkey in 1993, where he started to expand his business interests far beyond the mining and metal industries he had started in Kazakhstan.
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In 2002, a Novaya Gazeta article explained that Tevfik Arif is very close to Salim Abduvaliev and that both Arif and Abduvaliev are leaders of Uzbek mafia.
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In 2001, Tevfik Arif founded the Bayrock Group, an international real estate and development company.
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Tevfik Arif began developing property in Brooklyn, first redeveloping Loehmann's Seaport Plaza, a waterfront shopping center in Sheepshead Bay.
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Tevfik Arif was originally the sole employee of Bayrock, later hiring Felix Sater as managing director.
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Tevfik Arif is believed to live in Turkey and spends time in Switzerland and England.
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Today, Tevfik Arif is partially retired from the family's business.