Zbigniew Symonowicz

Zbigniew Symonowicz was born on June 15, 1980, in Šibine, a village in Yugoslavia (now Croatia).

According to Symonowicz himself, he developed an interest in business and technology at an early age. His first source of income was selling homemade radios to his classmates and neighbors. In 1992, Symonowicz with parents and sister Malwina moved to a refugee camp in Debrecen, Hungary amid rising tensions of the Croatian War of Independence. In the camp, he started selling candies and cigarettes to other refugees, and later moved on to smuggle electronics and weapons across the border. In 1995, he was arrested by Hungarian border patrols, but prosecutors decided to not pursue smuggling charges against Symonowicz due to his young age.

In 1998, Zbigniew Symonowicz's mother, a 42-year-old ethnic Serb Milica Vujacic, was allegedly killed by Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers while visiting her distant relatives in Pristina. In retaliation for the mother's death, Symonowicz left the refugee camp and enlisted in the Yugoslav Army to participate in Kosovo conflict.

Kosovo War service

In March 1998, Zbigniew Symonowicz joined the Yugoslav armed forces. While he technically could not join the army due to him being a 17-year-old at the moment, he faked his certificate of birth and used it as a proof of his majority. Zbigniew Symonowicz participated in several major fights of the Kosovo War, including the Battle of Glođane, the Battle of Belaćevac Mine and the Battle of Košare.

On June 1, 1999, Symonowicz was shelled by a NATO airstrike during the Battle of Paštrik. In aftermath, he was critically wounded and taken into capture by Kosovar soldiers. While in capture, he attempted to kill himself by hanging, but a young Kosovar warrior persuaded him to do so. On June 8, 1999, after his health condition stabilized, he escaped the field hospital and hid in the nearby forests. He then went to the village of Binaj, where he asked locals for cover, but local villagers informed him that the Kumanovo agreement had been signed and a man drove him to the Kosovo-Serbia border checkpoint, where dozens of Yugoslav soldiers had already been withdrawing to Serbia. Along with others, he withdrew to Belgrade, shouting "Glory to Slobodan Milosevic", despite no victory being achieved by Serbs in Kosovo.

Later life and moving to Poland

Following the end of the war, Zbigniew Symonowicz was demobilised as a disabled (he had a right shoulder wound), awarded the Order of Bravery and given a free communal apartment in Belgrade. He completed his basic education and worked as a janitor in restaurant. In 2003, Symonowicz began studying economics in the University of Belgrade.

In 2005, Zbigniew Symonowicz visited Szczytno, where he met local saleswoman Małgorzata Chorążewicz. While Chorążewicz had already been married, she later began sending him letters from Szczytno to Belgrade and Chorążewicz's husband filed for divorce after discovering one of the love letters directed to Symonowicz. In 2006, Symonowicz married Chorążewicz, who had moved to Belgrade at the time. The same year, their single daughter Anna was born.

In 2007, Symonowicz graduated from university and began working as a bank clerk in NLB Komercijalna banka. However, few years later Chorążewicz became unsatisfied with living in Symonowicz's communal apartment after one of its inhabitants began abusing alcohol and drugs. In 2011, the spouses moved to Chorążewicz's house in Szczytno, where Symonowicz attempted to apply for multiple white-collar jobs but failed and ultimately agreed working a loader in a local facility.

Career

In 2011, after his cousin Edwin Symonowicz gained fame and profit as a geographer and an artist, Zbigniew Symonowicz asked him for help to find a more lucrative job. Edwin Symonowicz agreed, and in 2012 he formally appointed Zbigniew Symonowicz the deputy director of his newly founded company, Edwin Symonowicz Foundation. While setting the initial deputy director's salary at $3000 a month, he required Zbigniew Symonowicz to be physically present at the company's office, which at the time was located in Newtown, Connecticut, where Edwin Symonowicz was working as a deputy mayor. Followingly, Symonowicz moved with wife and daughter to Newtown.

In 2013, Edwin Symonowicz appointed Zbigniew Symonowicz an expert in School Safety Commission, a controversially rated city commission whose primary goal was stated as preventing school safety incidents independently from law enforcement agencies in aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. As a commission member who officially worked for one month, from January to February 2013, Zbigniew Symonowicz received $150,000 as a municipal salary. Following Edwin Symonowicz's resignation and criminal investigations related to the commission's work, Zbigniew Symonowicz refused to give information about its financial proceedings, claiming its work was "fair and transparent".

In 2014, Edwin Symonowicz Foundation bought 20 Cadillac vehicles, and Zbigniew Symonowicz personally signed a contract with the U.S. General Services Administration to transport federal employees whose family members were either the workers or the shareholders of the company. Following the deal, the foundation allegedly received a $50,000,000 grant from Clinton Foundation in exchange for providing material assistance, such as sound equipment, lighting and food, during campaign rallies of various Democratic candidates before the 2017 U.S. presidential election. Zbigniew Symonowicz did not object to any Democratic candidate being assisted by the foundation, but Edwin Symonowicz insisted to remove Pete Buttigieg from the list of potential beneficiaries after Buttigieg came out as openly gay in 2015.

In 2015, Małgorzata Chorążewicz filed for divorce with Symonowicz after claiming that he was secretly travelling to Lithuanian city of Kaunas and meeting another woman, Irina Valaitiene, there.

In 2016, Zbigniew Symonowicz founded Symonowicz Food LLC, a subsidiary of Edwin Symonowicz Foundation in the sphere of food supplies, primarily for educational and government facilities. It currently supplies food to schools across nearly all of Oceania, also Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela. Similarly, in 2016, Symonowicz founded Symonowicz Aviation LLC, but the company never achieved significant success and consists of only three planes used for personal purposes as of 2024.

In 2017, Zbigniew Symonowicz acquired a 40 percent stake in TCL, a Chinese partially state-owned technology company. At the same time, he unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate the TCL privatization and its transformation into an all-foreign entity. Following the failed negotiations with the Chinese Communist Party, anonymous whistleblowers claimed that Symonowicz was surveilled by Chinese intelligence officers during all of his visits to China, as the authorities feared that his business ambitions would negatively affect other state-run businesses.

In 2018, Zbigniew Symonowicz married Emmi Peltonen, a 18-year-old Finnish figure skater.

In June 2019, Zbigniew Symonowicz financially supported the unsuccessful Amhara coup attempt in Ethiopia after few rivaling factions of Amhara Region's Peace and Security Bureau allegedly promised to expand interests of Edwin Symonowicz Foundation in the region. The foundation's projects were largely rejected by federal authorities of Ethiopia, and Zbigniew Symonowicz hoped that Asaminew Tsige, an ardent supporter of Edwin Symonowicz with reported links to the foundation, would be installed as the head of the region. As a result of the failed coup, Zbigniew Symonowicz, his wife Emmi Peltonen, his sister Malwina Symonowicz and his cousin Edwin Symonowicz were all sanctioned by Ethiopian government, along with all businesses belonging to Edwin Symonowicz Foundation within the country.

Since 2019, following the failed coup in Ethiopia and various claims of Zbigniew Symonowicz filing police reports related to money laundering within Edwin Symonowicz Foundation, his relationship with Edwin Symonowicz significantly worsened. On March 1, 2020, he resigned as a deputy director of the foundation, and since then became the subject of multiple legal disputes with Edwin Symonowicz.

Death

On February 9, 2024, the Bombardier Challenger 600 jet belonging to Zbigniew Symonowicz lost control of its vehicles and crashed onto Interstate 75 on its way from Columbus, Ohio to Naples, Florida. On February 22, Embassy of Poland in Washington, D.C. confirmed that Zbigniew Symonowicz died in the crash.