Secret international property empire of Iranian Ayatollah’s inheritor together with mansions on London’s Billionaires’ Row and ‘Beverly Hills of Dubai’ – as regime massacres impoverished protesters

From mega-mansions in London and an exclusive villa in Dubai to several luxury European hotels, the son of the Iranian Ayatollah has been quietly building a lucrative property empire while laundering billions of pounds into the West, a report claims.

The financial power of Mojtaba Khamenei, the second eldest son of Iran‘s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, contrasts sharply with that of ordinary impoverished Iranians, who have been killed, beaten and arrested by the thousands in recent weeks for daring to challenge the Islamic Republic.

Now a year-long investigation into the 56-year-old’s foreign investments has revealed the full eyewatering extent of his sprawling wealth – which touches Persian Gulf shipping, Swiss bank accounts and luxury property – as well as the complex network that has allowed him to evade western sanctions imposed on him in 2019. 

According to the US Treasury Department, sanctions were imposed because he represented the Supreme Leader in ‘an official capacity despite never being elected or appointed to a government position’.

Mojtaba was found to have worked closely with the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, as well as be connected to the Basij, a religious militia affiliated with the Guards ‘to advance his father´s destabilising regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives’.

Over the last 20 years, Mojtaba has built close ties with the Guards, giving him added leverage across Iran’s political and security organisations. 

According to research by Bloomberg, Mojtaba’s name never appears on the multiple assets he owns – which are acquired through a spider network of shell companies, middle men and bank accounts held in the UK, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), through deals that stretch back to 2011.

The shell companies and intermediaries have been established across a wide geographical spread covering the UAE, Isle of Man, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Europe.

In the UK alone, Mojtaba – considered to be one of the most powerful men in the Middle East and tipped by supporters to succeed his father – is said to own a string of more than a dozen mansions worth in excess of £100million, according to insiders.

His portfolio includes a house in The Bishops Avenue, dubbed London’s ‘Billionaires’ Row’, which was purchased for £33.7m in 2014. 

According to Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who has analysed the financial investments of the Khamenei family, the deals have been orchestrated primarily through an Iranian businessman.

In October, the businessman was placed under UK sanctions for ‘hostile activity’ that included allegedly financing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

The move could prompt Mojtaba and his associates to sell off the network’s European assets ahead of similar sanctions imposed by the EU, an expert in money laundering investigations told Bloomberg.

As for the funding of this substantial portfolio, Mojtaba is believed to have siphoned off profit from Iranian oil sales, before funnelling it through his opaque network to evade international sanctions aimed at curbing Tehran’s military and political operations.

Ben Cowdock of Transparency International UK, which has tracked the British assets of Iran’s political and business elites, said: ‘It’s increasingly clear that those close to Iran’s political leaders have invested heavily in the UK.

‘Our property market should not serve as a safe deposit box for cronies who finance repressive regimes.’ 

Mojtaba has not just honed in on the UK however. 

The network also owns five-star hotels in Frankfurt, considered the financial capital of Germany, as well as on the Spanish holiday island of Majorca. There is also a luxury villa located in the ‘Beverly Hills of Dubai’.

The portfolio once included a penthouse in a five-star hotel in Toronto, but this was sold off for £5.6m in 2020. A section of a building in Paris, France, was equally offloaded in 2023.

Mojtaba is considered one of the most influential figures in the Iranian clerical establishment headed by his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A mid-ranking cleric who studied under religious conservatives in the seminaries of Qom, Mojtaba is a hardliner with close ties to the Revolutionary Guards, the force mandated to safeguard the Islamic Republic led by Khamenei since 1989.

Carrying the clerical rank of Hojjatoleslam, Mojtaba has never held a formal position in the Islamic Republic’s government, exercising his influence behind the scenes as the gatekeeper to his father, according to Iran watchers.

His role has long been a point of controversy in Iran, with critics rejecting any hint of dynastic politics in a country that overthrew a US-backed monarch in 1979. Khamenei has himself indicated opposition to the idea of dynastic succession.

Mojtaba has been a target of protesters’ anger in demonstrations since 2009, particularly during months of unrest that swept Iran over the death of a young woman in police custody in 2022, after she was arrested for allegedly breaching the Islamic Republic’s strict dress codes.

He has appeared at loyalist rallies, but has rarely spoken in public. In 2024, a video was widely shared in which he announced the suspension of Islamic jurisprudence classes he was teaching at Qom, fuelling speculation about the reasons.

He bares a strong resemblance to his father, and wears the black turban of a sayyed, indicating his family traces its lineage to the Prophet Mohammad.

Critics say Mojtaba lacks the clerical credentials to become Supreme Leader – Hojjatoleslam is a notch below the rank of Ayatollah – the position held by his father and Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic.

But he has remained in the frame, particularly after former President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash in 2024.

Mojtaba was also widely believed to have been behind the sudden rise of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election.

He backed Ahmadinejad in 2009 when he ran again and won a second term in a disputed election that resulted in anti-Government protests that were violently suppressed by the Basij and other security forces.

His wife is the daughter of a prominent hardliner, the former parliament speaker Gholamali Haddadadel.

Mojtaba was born in 1969 in the city of Mashhad, growing up as his father was helping to lead the opposition to the Shah, and as a young man he served in the Iran-Iraq war. 

The latest revelations concerning the wealth of the Ayatollah’s son come as US President Donald Trump weighs up military options against Iran, amid a rising death toll since protests against the regime began last month.   

Estimates suggest more than 33,000 people have been killed following the regime’s brutal crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.

The latest figures, which are double previous estimates, were revealed as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s regime warned it will treat any US military action ‘as an all-out war‘.

Some 97,645 have also been left wounded, with 30 per cent suffering eye injuries, according to research by Professor Amir-Mobarez Parasta.

Donald Trump has warned America would take ‘very strong action’ if the Iranian regime started hanging protesters.

The US President appeared poised to intervene earlier this month after troops from Britain and the United States were withdrawn from a major Middle East military base.

And with the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier moving towards the region, the prospect of an American attack on Iran remains on the table.

A senior Iranian official on Saturday told Reuters: ‘This military ‌build-up – we hope it is ‌not intended for real confrontation – but our military is ready for the worst-case scenario. This is why everything is on high alert in Iran.

‘This time we will treat any attack – limited, unlimited, surgical, kinetic, whatever they call it – as an all-out war against us, and we will respond in the hardest way possible to settle this.’

Trump is said to be looking at options that will encourage a regime change, including strikes on commanders and institutions that Washington holds responsible for the violence, to give demonstrators confidence to storm official buildings.

A US source said the options being discussed by Trump’s aides also included a much larger strike intended to have lasting impact, possibly against the ballistic missiles that can reach US allies in the Middle East or its nuclear enrichment programmes.

Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, said that without large-scale military defections Iran’s protests remained ‘heroic but outgunned’.