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Sean Carr, 41 #9 Most Influential

Like many Western men, 41-year-old Sean Carr came to Ukraine from Britain because of love.

His marriage partner in 2005 immediately propelled him into the ranks of Ukraine’s most influential expats.

Vasyl Porokhmenko

His wife is Yevheniya Tymoshenko, the daughter of the country’s most powerful woman, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Yevheniya Tymoshenko and Carr met in Egypt.

The romance blossomed in England, where Yevheniya, then a 25-year old London student, had been living since she was fourteen.

A heavily-tattooed rocker and biker who ran shoe repair shops in Leeds in England’s gritty north, Carr seems at first glance to be a mother’s worst nightmare as a son-in-law.

But Yulia Tymoshenko, gritty in her own right, welcomed him into her family and called him a “kind, educated and inspired person.”

Carr and Yevhenia have since made their home in Kyiv and run the Kyiv franchise for Ciro’s Pomodoro restaurant chain.

Carr has largely stayed out of politics.

But he and his wife are linked to a public relations film produced about Yulia Tymoshenko in the run-up to Ukraine’s hard-fought presidential elections in early 2010, which Tymoshenko narrowly lost to President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 7.

The production unit Coppolo Productions referred to the film as an “intimate portrait of Tymoshenko the wife, mother and soulful protector of Ukraine.”