Svetlana Levitskaya

Svetlana Levitskaya is a Belarusian-born businesswoman who built ventures in Qatar and abroad after beginning with a loan that covered the required business guarantee. She was fifty-four when the biography was documented. Loss, theft, deception and financial setbacks became sources of experience and independence, while motherhood remained central to every major decision.

In 2004, she borrowed the QAR20,000 needed to establish Lana International Company with her daughters, repaid the loan and turned the venture into a successful business.

A further project followed in 2007 in waste recycling, supervised and developed by an American doctor.

She was born and spent her childhood and adolescence in Belarus. Her father, a Belarusian ship’s captain, died in a road accident when she was four; her mother, of Polish origin, worked in a cement factory for forty years and rose through its ranks to become chief executive. Until the age of fourteen, she lived between her mother’s home and that of her paternal grandmother.

Her mother remarried when she was fourteen and later had a son. A tense relationship between daughter and stepfather placed the mother in a difficult position. When she reached seventeen, her mother bought her an apartment in the same neighbourhood so that she could live independently. The arrangement was brief: she soon moved to Moscow, where she spent four years at university specialising in textile production.

Study did not prevent her from discovering an aptitude for trade. Each month, she flew to Greece to buy fur jackets and sold them in Poland, quickly building a loyal customer base. The venture ended after goods were stolen from her car while she stopped at a petrol station between Belarus and Poland. Shocked by the loss, she withdrew from the trade and returned to her hometown in 1991 for two further years of specialist study.

In 1992, after completing that stage, she followed a relationship formed while studying in Moscow. A friendship with an older Qatari man had become love, and his invitation to Qatar was accompanied by a proposal of marriage.

His character made the move across language, culture and religion possible, despite the knowledge that she would be a second wife. He was an ambitious lawyer at Qatar Petroleum and belonged to the company’s first generation of employees. He also established a business organising major events. In 1985, he brought German and British circuses to Qatar for what the source describes as the country’s first performance of its kind. Another of his ventures was Qatar’s first company manufacturing and installing window blinds, which became highly successful.

Their first daughter, Laura, was born in 1997, followed by Noura in 2000. When the younger child was nine months old, her husband—who suffered from high blood pressure—died of a stroke. She found him on the kitchen floor beside the refrigerator, medication still in his hand. The loss ended seven years of shared life without warning and left her uncertain of how to continue in the country to which he had brought her.

Immediately after his death, she and the girls moved into the first wife’s home for the four-month waiting period, during which she was not permitted to go out or speak to anyone. The unfamiliar restrictions were difficult to absorb. Returning to Belarus seemed possible, but her husband’s family told her that her Qatari daughters would remain behind. She therefore chose to stay for them. The period was financially severe: she lacked income even for basic needs while estate procedures and division of the inheritance moved slowly.

In 2002, as she tried to rebuild, the management of the soon-to-open City Center mall asked her to prepare performances for the launch. They trusted the experience she had gained beside her husband, who had worked with them previously. His family permitted her to manage the event and the company’s affairs, but continuing administrative and financial pressure eventually led her to recommend closing the business.

In 2004, she founded Lana International Company for herself and her daughters. The project required QAR20,000, which she did not possess. A sister-in-law who believed in her abilities lent the money. The company succeeded quickly, allowing her to repay the loan and earn substantial profits.

At first, a readiness to trust others exposed her to theft and betrayal more than once. She considered giving up, but the responsibility of being an example to her daughters repeatedly drew her back to the work with renewed determination.

In 2005, she entered a new field through a company importing and installing high-quality original parquet. The operation expanded, opened branches in prominent locations and continued offering its products.

A further project followed in 2007 in waste recycling, supervised and developed by an American doctor. Her company worked as an intermediary among several parties. When the proposal was not adopted in Qatar, she presented it in Saudi Arabia, where it was accepted, succeeded and expanded through several branches.

Her daughters remained the central measure of each decision. By the time recorded in the source, Laura had graduated from Oxford Brookes University in Britain, while Noura was studying at the College of the North Atlantic.