According to media reports, an Iranian businessman is said to have built up a property empire in Europe. This includes luxury hotels in Germany. Traces of the company are now said to lead to the son of the slain spiritual leader Ali Khamenei. He could become his successor.
Following the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the succession at the head of the Islamic Republic remains unresolved.
No new Supreme Leader has yet been formally named. Behind the scenes, however, Mojtaba Khamenei — the 56-year-old son of the assassinated Supreme Leader — has emerged as the frontrunner to succeed his father, though no formal announcement has been made.
Khamenei has never run for office or been subjected to a public vote, but for decades has been a highly influential figure in the inner circle of the Supreme Leader, cultivating deep ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Critics have noted that a father-to-son succession would be politically sensitive in the Islamic Republic.
Khamenei himself had reportedly opposed his son’s candidacy, with an Iranian source close to his office telling Reuters in 2024 that the leader did not want to witness a return to hereditary rule, which many Iranians view as undermining the 1979 revolution that ousted the US-backed monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Mojtaba Khamenei is also reported to control a substantial overseas property network. A year-long Bloomberg investigation found that he directs a significant overseas real-estate network through intermediaries, with no assets appearing directly in his name.
European property portfolio
Labelled a corrupt banker by the UK government last year Ali Aliakbar Ansari is accused of funding ‘hostile activity’ carried out by the IRGC bought 11 palatial properties in 2013 for £73million.
He purchased the mansions via Birch Ventures Limited based in the tax haven The Isle of Man and has since let the properties fall into a state of disrepair.
A year later the now sanctioned Ansari bought a 1.2 acre newbuild property for £33.7million and in 2017 purchased a flat in one of the street’s gated developments for £8.1million.
The portfolio includes luxury London properties, a villa in Dubai and upscale hotels in Frankfurt and Mallorca, with funding routed largely from Iranian oil revenues through financial institutions in the UK, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Serbia, Russia,
and the UAE via shell companies.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, owns two properties in Kensington, west London, with an estimated value of more than £50 million.
So if the 2016 Iranian property boom is anything to go by then the £1billion worth of housing bought may start to crumble before our eyes, and Billionaire’s Row will be the least of our worries.
Ali Ansari has previously denied working as a conduit for Khamenei and that he plans to challenge the government’s sanctions.
Frankfurt hotels and a reported €400m European portfolio in the UK and Spain.
A key holding identified by Bloomberg is the Hilton Frankfurt Gravenbruch, a five-star hotel in Germany’s financial capital.
Corporate filings show the hotel has been owned since 2011 through entities tied to an associate of Iranian businessman Ali Ansari and was brought under Hilton’s management in 2024.
Frankfurt officials have publicly questioned how Iran-linked capital has flowed into the city’s hospitality sector.
Specifically, the owner is the Iranian multimillionaire Ali Ansari, who is said to act as the liaison for Khamenei’s son. Ansari denies any connection to the Revolutionary Guards or to Mojtaba Khamenei.
Ansari, an Iranian construction magnate, was sanctioned by the UK in October 2025.
None of the documents seen by Bloomberg list assets directly in Khamenei’s name; instead, many of the purchases appear in Ansari’s name.
In a statement through his lawyer at the time, Ansari said he “strongly denies” any financial or personal relationship with Mojtaba Khamenei and noted his intention to challenge the sanctions imposed by the UK.
How big is his property empire in Europe?
A separate Financial Times investigation, based on corporate filings, found that Ansari had built a European property portfolio worth approximately €400 million.
The assets include luxury properties across several European countries, ranging from a golf resort in Mallorca to a ski hotel in Austria, structured through a complex network of offshore companies registered in jurisdictions including Luxembourg, St Kitts and Nevis, Austria, Germany and Spain.
Business Empire
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Ansari was best known as a rising industrialist in Tehran. He created TAT Bank in 2009, which later launched a plan to build Iran Mall, a luxury shopping center, owned by the bank. By 2013, a merger turned TAT into Ayandeh Bank, which collapsed in 2025 – engulfed in allegations around insider lending and mired in debt and controversy over its close political ties to officials.
People familiar with the matter said the younger Khamenei was central to the bank’s operations and the mall project. Ansari was the principal shareholder in Ayandeh.
Ansari would meet privately with Khamenei at a house in Tehran’s upmarket Zafaraniyeh district, two of the people said, and on multiple occasions use the Ayandeh office to hold confidential talks.
As Ansari’s domestic empire expanded, so too did his role as Mojtaba Khamenei’s financial conduit abroad establishing banking relationships across Europe and routing profits from oil exports through a labyrinth of companies in the UAE, according to some of the people. Much of the money in the network has flowed through non-Iranian firms like Ziba Leisure Ltd., registered in Saint Kitts and Nevis, the Isle of Man-based Birch Ventures Ltd. and A&A Leisure Ltd. as well as Emirati entities such as Midas Oil Industries FZC and Midas Oil Trading DMCC.
Officially the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company sells the country’s crude, but sanctions have pushed much of the trade into opaque channels involving front companies, middlemen and informal traders, according to US officials and people familiar with the business. Elites connected to the Supreme Leader and the IRGC – such as the younger Khamenei – have been central to controlling some of these networks, the people said.
In one example, a UAE-based intermediary firm was used for transfers via Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank PJSC to Ziba Leisure, according to SWIFT messages seen by Bloomberg. Documents show that Ziba Leisure was incorporated in 2014 with Ansari and Moris Mashali, an Iranian-born British national, as two of the directors. The transfer pre-dated the imposition of any sanctions against Khamenei and Ansari.
ADIB said it operated under strict regulatory oversight and that the “mentioned entities” aren’t clients.
In 2016, Ansari obtained a Cypriot passport, allowing him to open new bank accounts and companies in Europe. It also helped mask his Iranian political ties, according to people familiar with the matter. Officials on the island later debated whether to revoke his citizenship amid scrutiny over his links to the IRGC and the younger Khamenei, according to documents seen by Bloomberg.
The country’s Ministry of Interior declined to comment on whether Ansari’s Cypriot passport had been revoked but said the case is under investigation.
Background and clerical standing
Mojtaba Khamenei was born on 8 September 1969 in Mashhad.
He studied theology in Qom and fought as a young volunteer during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s — credentials that still carry weight within the revolutionary elite.
Yet his authority has largely come from proximity to power rather than his religious stature. CBS News
He holds the rank of hojatoleslam, a mid-level clerical rank below that of an ayatollah.
His father was not an ayatollah either when he became the country’s leader in 1989, and the law was amended to accommodate him, so a similar compromise may also be possible for Mojtaba.
Like his father, he wears a black turban, which traditionally signals lineage to the Prophet Mohammed.
Khamenei abused Iranian system
Iran’s Supreme Leader heads one of the country’s wealthiest organizations which was created through the seizure of thousands of properties and assets after the revolution. Called the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, also known as SETAD, it manages billions of dollars worth of assets, commercial holdings and charities. It’s one of the largest state-owned conglomerates in the Middle East, operating in sectors ranging from insurance to energy and telecoms.
His son’s overseas empire is more modest. Its purpose less clear. If it was intended as some kind of rainy day fund in case the family needed to leave Iran then the decision by UK authorities to sanction Ansari – and freeze those assets – has complicated the picture.
Bloomberg has traced more than a dozen properties in London owned by the network. One, on The Bishops Avenue, is in Ansari’s name. Others are under the ownership of Birch Ventures, where UK Companies House records show Ansari as the one active beneficial owner.
“It’s increasingly clear that those close to Iran’s political leaders have invested heavily in the UK,” says Ben Cowdock, a senior investigations lead at Transparency International UK, which has tracked the British assets of Iran’s political and business elites. “Our property market should not serve as a safe deposit box for cronies who finance repressive regimes.”
Photographs taken at the funeral of Ansari’s father in June 2025 highlight the family’s continued close proximity to the Iranian leadership, with attendees including family of, and veteran advisers to, the Supreme Leader.
But the failure of Ayandeh Bank renewed domestic public criticism of Ansari from some hardline politicians. Several bank failures in the past decade have been blamed on mismanagement by executives who’ve been prosecuted for illegally enriching themselves or lending massive sums.
In October last year, a hardline member of parliament, Amir-Hossein Sabeti, urged the judiciary to force Ansari to foot the bill for Ayandeh’s financial losses, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.
The network also owns five-star hotels in Germany’s financial capital – attracting the attention of the Frankfurt authorities – and along Mallorca’s sun-soaked southwest coast in Spain. A penthouse in Toronto’s Four Seasons Private Residences was sold for C$10.5 million ($7.7 million), in 2020, according to property records, and a section of a building in the French capital Paris was offloaded in 2023.
“The Iranian government is trying to establish a foothold,” in Germany’s financial system, says Nargess Eskandari-Grunberg, Frankfurt’s deputy mayor who was born in Tehran and has been a vocal critic of the Islamic Republic’s leadership. “They abuse our system.”
The Hilton Frankfurt Gravenbruch, on the city’s south side, boasts a spa, country club and two ballrooms. In a statement celebrating its re-branding under the Hilton banner in 2024, the US-based global hospitality chain highlighted the hotel’s history of hosting international stars and heads of state.
Financial records and the Hilton statement both identify Mashali as the managing director of Allsco Gravenbruch Hotelbetriebsgesellschaft mbH, which has owned the hotel since 2011. It signed a management agreement with Hilton for the property in 2024.
Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. and Four Seasons declined to comment.
UK corporate filings show that Mashali, a solicitor, and Ansari both held roles at multiple firms, including Veritas Reales Investment Ltd. and A&A Leisure, which was dissolved in 2024.
Documents seen by Bloomberg identify them as co-directors of Ziba Leisure, which was the sole shareholder of Allsco Gravenbruch Hotelbetriebsgesellschaft and the Frankfurt hotel. German and Luxembourg corporate records show that the ownership structure has changed at least twice in the past year but that Mashali remains a director of the controlling entity. Public records reviewed may not capture ownership changes completed in recent days.
In a written statement to Bloomberg, Mashali said his link to Ansari “has always been as a regulated lawyer providing legal advice on various matters, and as a consultant working with law firms.” His lawyer subsequently denied Mashali had any connection to Khamenei or that, to his knowledge, he had any business dealings where Khamenei had an interest.
Neither Khamenei nor Ansari responded to questions about any of the named entities.
A European official involved in money-laundering investigations says that the UK asset freeze on Ansari might prompt a fire sale of the network’s European assets in case restrictions are imposed by the EU.
Frankfurt’s deputy mayor wants the German government to do more: “This regime has no legitimacy whatsoever,” says Eskandari-Grunberg, speaking in the wake of the deadly protests. “The companies and associates of those in power must be sanctioned.”
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