by Christos Zabounis
At the reading room of the Athens Club, members have access to both the Greek and international press, though not in its entirety, but through a selection of leading publications. One of these is the Financial Times. Its supplement, FT Wealth, recently featured a burning Cohiba cigar on its cover, accompanied by the clever headline “Up in Smoke”. The subtitle was equally cryptic: The mysterious billionaire and Cuba’s cigar industry. In a seven-page feature under a different title, “Playing with Fire”, journalist Jack Adamovic Davies conducted an in-depth investigation, from which we learned the following: In 2020, Chen Zhi, a Chinese-born businessman based in Cambodia, established an investment vehicle that acquired a 50% stake in Habanos S.A. The remaining 50% belongs to Cuba Tabaco, the Cuban government’s state-owned tobacco company. The amount paid by Prince Group to Imperial Brands, the previous owner, was $1.4 billion. With a 57% stake in the consortium, Zhi became the largest private shareholder in a cigar empire. He immediately made a move that sent the market into turmoil. He aligned the prices of all Havana’s coveted cigars with those in Hong Kong, where they were the most expensive in the world. At the same time, he engineered artificial shortages, turning aficionados into treasure hunters, scouring airports and “forgotten countries” for forgotten stocks. As a result, when supplies to Greek tobacconists finally resumed, a Cohiba Robusto that had previously cost €25–30, for example, had risen to €85–90. In January 2026, Zhi was extradited from Cambodia to China over allegations of online fraud (the same kind behind those phone calls we receive urging us to invest in cryptocurrencies). Meanwhile, the United States seized $15 billion from his Bitcoin accounts, while European Union sanctions against Prince Group caused a major disruption in the market, driving leading distributors into bankruptcy, including 5th Avenue in Germany, Austria and Poland. New investors are now competing to acquire the remaining stake, aware that Havana cigars will always be in demand, as they are considered the finest in terms of quality.
P.S. One particularly interesting detail in the article concerns Cuba’s estimated loss of $1 trillion in revenue over the nearly 60 years that the US embargo has been in place.
