| Mazen Al Tarazi | |
| Native Name: | مازن سمير الترزي |
| Native Name Lang: | ar |
| Birth Name: | Mazen Samir Tarazi |
| Birth Place: | Saidnaya, Syria |
| Nationality: | Syrian |
| Citizenship: | Syria - Canada |
Mazen Samir Al-Tarazi (; born 1962), also known as Mazen Al Tarazi and Mazin Al Tarazi, is a Syrian-Canadian businessman with close ties to the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. He has significant activities in the media sector in Kuwait. He is the founder and CEO of Marketing Group for Advertising, Publishing and Distribution and the Dar al-Hadaf Newspaper Company, which he founded with Kuwaiti businessman Ahmed Al-Jarallah. Until December 2022, he was a board member of Dar Al Seyassah Company for Printing, Publishing and Distribution WLL in Kuwait, the publisher of the Arab Times and Al-Seyassah newspapers. He is sanctioned by the United Kingdom and EU for his material support to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.[1] [2]
Al-Tarazi was born Mazen Samir Tarazi was born in Damascus in 1962, and he started his career in Kuwait as a printing press worker at Al Anba and Al Rai newspapers, then as a manager at Al Waseet classified advertising paper owned by Syrian businessman Bashar Kiwan. He then became a manager at Al-Seyassah. He later partnered with the owner of Al-Seyassah, Kuwaiti businessman Ahmed Al-Jarallah, to launch weekly magazine Al-Hadaf operating under Dar al-Hadaf Newspaper Company.[3] [4] [5] He was named in the Panama Papers as the sole owner of First Kingston Investments Ltd., registered in the British Virgin Islands.[6] He is partner in Al-Waseet classifieds paper in Jordan with Syrian-French businessman Bashar Kiwan[7]
Al-Tarazi developed close ties to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. He was relatively unknown in Syria until 2014, when he provided a private plane to transport Syrians from Kuwait to Syria to vote for Bashar al-Assad in presidential elections. In 2015, he acquired the Sheraton Ma'aret Sednaya Hotel & Resort. In 2017, his company National Airline Company LLC was granted a license for Syria's second private airline, Alwataniya Air.[8] [9] [10]
Al-Tarazi partnered with Damascus Governorate and Damascus Cham Private Joint Stock Company in reconstructing a new city, Marota City, in the Basateen al-Razi area in the Mezzeh district of Damascus, in two projects. The first is a $250m, 120,000 sqm shopping mall and six other buildings, and the second are give properties worth $70m.[11]
In 2019, Al-Tarazi was sanctioned by the European Union.[12] In 2020, he was sanctioned by the United Kingdom "benefitting from and/or supporting the Syrian regime."[13] In 2021, the EU General Court dismissed an application by Mazen Al Tarazi to annul his inclusion in the Syria sanctions list.[1] [14]
In March 2019, Kuwaiti authorities arrested Al-Tarazi and four employees of Al-Hadaf Magazine after the magazine's headquarters were raided, reportedly on charges of money laundering and publishing without a license.[15] In March 2019, the Arab Times, owned by Al-Tarazi's business partner, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, published an article describing the allegations of money laundering against of Al-Tarazi as "concocted lies, as several bloggers have raised unfounded allegations in the past against notable personalities in the country, which clearly damaged their reputations and defamed their personalities".[16] In December 2022, Al-Jarallah released a statement in his newspaper, the Arab Times announcing his "severance of any relationship with the so-called Mazen Al Tarazi".[17]