Afghan Biographies

Haidari, Yaqoob


Name Haidari, Yaqoob
Ethnic backgr. Tajik
Date of birth 1962
Function/Grade ex Provincial Governor
History and Biodata

2. Previous Functions:

Director of TacForce Corporation, Kabul (20130113)
Provincial Governor Kabul (20170913, 20210821)
3. Biodata:
Muhammad Yaqub Haidari Mohammad Yaqoob Haidary Mohammad Yaqoub Haidari Mohammad Haidar Yaqubi hails from the Guldar-e Koh Daman area of Kabul province and was born 1962. He is a Tajik with a military background (and according to a source from the Ghani team also in intelligence work) and a Masters in Pedagogy. He obtained his MA in the Soviet Union. Then he “worked for a short time with the government” (not more details given). Afterwards, he started an import-export business for agricultural and dairy products that regularly brought him to eastern Europe and Russia. Today, he says, his business is focused on construction, IT, and still the export and import of agricultural products.
Yaqub Haidari was nominated by President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai as Minister of Irrigation, Agriculture and Livestock.(201150112). As director of a security company, TacForce, he may have been given the contract in 2013 to build the headquarters of the now defunct Afghanistan Public Protection Force in Kabul and ten provinces when another ex-PDPA official, Jamil Jombesh, was deputy minister in charge of the APPF.

He holds a Czech passport.

 

A Mohammad Yaqub Haidari, born 15.06.1962 is named by INTERPOL (to track an international fugitive calling for public assistance) for tax crimes, mentioning Haidari staying possibly in Aghanistan. He escaped investigational arrest in Estonia, but later he was sentenced to four years and six months prison in absentia in the Rapla Dairy related scandal. According to Estonian media, Haidari was investigated for embezzlement and tax evasion from the time when he was director of dairy firm Rapla Dairy. The company went bankrupt in 2003. Haidari confirmed that he is on the Interpol wanted list but insisted he is innocent. "I am being targeted by a political conspiracy. When you enter the world of business and politics, this is what happens," he told a nwes agency. He said that the taxes were owed not by him but by a person who bought a company from him that did business in Estonia. But according to several Estonian media reports, Haidari is wanted by Estonian judicial authorities for tax evasion and suspected embezzlement in a case dating back to 2003. Haidari acted as the managing director of Estonian dairy company As Rapla Dairy until early that year, when the firm went bankrupt. A long court battle followed, with Haidari fleeing Estonia in 2006 and failing to show up for a mandatory court session the following year, the reports said.(20150117)

Haidari was recommended for the cabinet position by Ahmad Zia Masood, the Special Envoy to President Ghani for Reform and Good Governance. In response to the concerns raised around Haidari's supposed criminal past, Masood has maintained the government is unaware of any such history and that if it is indeed true then Haidari's nomination would be reconsidered.

 

Haidari has been withdrawn from the list of Minister nominees.(20150119)

Mohammad Yaqub Haidari has been appointed as the governor of Kabul, according to a statement from The Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG). IDLG suggested Haidari for the position of Kabul governor to the Presidential Palace which had been approved, the statement said. Haidari would replace Hamid Akram as Kabul Governor because of old age retirement.(20170831)

Mohammad Yaqub Haidari survived an armed attack in the Shakardara district of central Kabul province, but a governor's bodyguard was killed in the incident.(20200808)


 

Last Modified 2023-11-29
Established 2015-01-12