On a leafy residential stretch of North London dubbed Billionaires’ Row, Saudi royals and wealthy Russians have long come shopping for high-end real estate. The Iranians were a more surprising addition to the neighborhood.
Several sprawling mansion plots along the thoroughfare more formally known as The Bishops Avenue make up a chunk of the extensive London property holdings funded by Iranian money that Western officials have linked to the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iranian banker Ali Ansari acquired the Bishops Avenue plots and other nearby property in 2018 for around 90 million pounds, equivalent to around $120 million today, according to people familiar with the deal. The transaction took place offshore through an entity registered in the Isle of Man, the people said.
Now frozen by British sanctions, the properties have fallen into disrepair, the overgrown lots a blight on an upscale street lined with manicured gardens and iron gates. Their desolation contrasts with hives of construction activity nearby, where cranes tower over designer redevelopments.
But they are nonetheless an illustration of how Iran has been able to move money internationally for years despite Western sanctions aimed at choking off the regime’s ability to do so.
The Middle East war has heightened scrutiny on the global financial networks alleged to fund the Iranian regime’s military, domestic oppression and foreign proxies. It is a web that Western officials say stretches from the United Arab Emirates to Toronto, Hong Kong and Singapore.
London has emerged a key part of that nexus. The proliferation of offshore vehicles, combined with a laissez-faire attitude toward sources of foreign wealth, have made it an attractive place for well-to-do Iranians to park cash, real-estate experts and wealth managers say.
“You name a jurisdiction where people have earned a lot of money through questionable means, it ends up in London property,” said Steve Goodrich, who leads research and investigations at Transparency International UK, focused on rooting out corruption.
London is hardly the lone destination for Iran’s dirty money.
The U.S. Treasury’s financial-crimes enforcement arm said last year it identified some $9 billion in potentially illicit Iranian money passing through foreign accounts at U.S. banks in 2024 alone, much of it oil and gas proceeds routed through accounts and shell companies in Asia and the Middle East. The U.S. has highlighted Iranian cash flows it says support arms purchases and bolster the ruling regime. Officials also cite outflows of personal fortunes belonging to connected Iranians, described as the spoils of classic kleptocracy.
Cryptocurrency analysts say they have tracked billions in Iran-linked outflows in recent years. In February, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers the U.S. had seen Iranian leaders “wiring money out of the country like crazy.”
London has stables of lawyers and accountants experienced at disguising sources of wealth and who help clients obtain visas that grease the wheels of business.
British anticrime officials and the financial-sector watchdogs estimated in 2024 that more than £100 billion in illicit money is laundered inside or through the U.K. every year. Government officials pledged to boost barriers to dirty money following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Ansari’s real-estate portfolio in the British capital includes a North London mansion that U.K. property records show cost him £33.7 million in December 2014. His name is also attached to two luxury apartments in London’s high-end Kensington neighborhood, purchased in 2014 and 2016 for a combined £36 million.
The apartments are just steps from the Israeli Embassy and the nearby royal residence at Kensington Palace. The proximity has prompted a spate of British media reports about security in the area and the potential for Iran to have monitored consular activities from close range.
Ansari’s close working relationship with senior regime officials “is a well-known secret in Iran,” said Farzin Nadimi, senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who has studied Iran’s military and international flows of regime money.
The layers of shell companies and use of foreign conduits into luxury real estate help leaders of the Islamic Republic maintain an image back home of embracing modesty and rejecting lavish lifestyles, researchers say.
As for where the regime has chosen to move money, Nadimi said, “They probably learned from the Russian oligarchs that investing in London real estate was a good idea.”
London assets bearing Ansari’s name were frozen when the U.K. imposed sanctions in October 2025. British officials accused Ansari of financially supporting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the paramilitary group that protects the regime and serves as its dominant political and economic entity. A British minister in a government statement called Ansari a “corrupt Iranian banker and businessman.”
Ansari was the dominant shareholder in Iran’s Ayandeh Bank, a private lender that collapsed in late 2025. The failure helped trigger massive protests that turned deadly. He hasn’t been sanctioned in the U.S.
Ayandeh was run by regime cronies, The Wall Street Journal earlier reported, and sank under a multibillion-dollar pile of bad loans. In a statement in October, Ansari blamed the bank’s failure on “decisions and policies made beyond the bank’s control.”
Ansari, through a London lawyer, said he plans to challenge the U.K. sanctions and denied any financial relationship with the Revolutionary Guard. The lawyer also denied reporting by Bloomberg in January describing Ansari as an established money man working for Mojtaba Khamenei—who became Iran’s new supreme leader earlier this month—helping move oil proceeds and other business profits abroad.
Khamenei is the second-eldest son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the previous supreme leader, who was killed on the first day of the war in February. The newly elevated son was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019.
Elsewhere, U.K. and overseas entities have been used to route Iran-linked cash into the European market, including into high-end hotels in Germany and Spain, corporate filings show.
A few minutes’ drive from Ansari’s Kensington apartments, a boutique London hotel called the Gainsborough Hotel sold for £6.5 million in 2018 to an entity controlled by Salim Ahmed Said, according to U.K. property records. The hotel, a short walk from world-renowned museums, is formed of conjoined Victorian townhouses with British and Irish flags displayed out front.
Said is an Iraqi-British national who since at least 2020 has operated a network of companies helping Iran dodge international sanctions on sales of oil, according to U.S. Treasury Department sanctions imposed in July 2025.
Robinbest Limited, a U.S.-sanctioned entity, is the Gainsborough’s registered owner and directly linked to Said, according to U.S. sanctions and U.K. property records. The records list a villa in Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah as his address.
Said, 48 years old, holds two British passports, one that expired this month and a second expiring in 2029, and has used several aliases, according to the U.S. Treasury. He couldn’t be reached for comment. Said has previously said his oil trades were legitimate.
Ansari, 57 years old, was born in Ghazvin, Iran, and holds four passports, two from Iran, one from Cyprus and the other from the tiny Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, a former British colony, according to an October U.K. sanctions filing. It lists Dubai as a primary address.
Ansari identified himself as Iranian and provided a Tehran address on early U.K. corporate filings, in 2007. Years later on filings tied to the mansion plots on Billionaires’ Row, he listed his nationality as Cypriot.
As a result of the recent sanctions, a developer who worked with both Ansari and previous owners of the North London properties has gone unpaid for work he did for the Iranian, according to people familiar with the relationship.
The plots sit vacant, with faded signs beside locked gates and security signs warning “Guard dogs in use. Trespassers will be prosecuted.”
Write to Jenny Strasburg at jenny.strasburg@wsj.com