Britain’s capital—long a magnet for the world’s kleptocrats—has become the West’s soft underbelly, where the financiers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have quietly built a property empire while ordinary Iranians face economic ruin at home. The latest example is Ali Ansari, a Tehran-born tycoon whose empire was built on corruption and cronyism. The U.K. government announced sanctions against Ansari last week for his role in financially enabling the work of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Britain’s Minister for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer, announced new sanctions against Iranian banker Ali Aliakbar Ansari for financially supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on October 30, 2025. Falconer said the IRGC, which reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, uses repression and targeted threats to conduct hostile acts in the UK — behavior he called “completely unacceptable.” He added that the sanctions “send a clear message” that the U.K. “will not tolerate threats from the IRGC” and “will take the most effective measures” against them.
The sanctions, while welcome, raise an obvious question: how did a man accused of large-scale fraud and corruption in Iran with ties to a hostile regime manage to amass a £100 million property portfolio in London’s most exclusive postcodes—even as the bank that served as the source of his wealth was collapsing?
Big Landowner
According to land registry records obtained by OCCRP, Ansari, who also used his late father’s name—Aliakbar Ansari—owns a £33.7 million mansion in North London. One of the properties—bought in 2014—boasts an indoor swimming pool, cinema, library and eight en-suite bedrooms. It is one of at least 11 homes in the prestigious “Bishop’s Avenue”also known as the Billionaire’s Row. It is registered to Birch Ventures Limited, an Isle of Man company under his control, with a service address in Dubai, collectively worth more than £73 million. Further investigations by The Sunday Times have revealed Ansari also owned two luxury flats with their own servants’ quarters close to Kensington Palace worth almost £36 million.
The U.K. Government sanctions against Ansari were announced after his Ayandeh Bank in Iran collapsed into bankruptcy last October. The sanctions came after U.S. officials imposed sanctions against Ansari’s Ayandeh bank in 2018 for “for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, IRIB, Iran’s state-media apparatus that routinely broadcasts false news reports and propaganda, including forced confessions of political detainees.” The Bank, which accumulated $5.1 billion in losses and nearly $3 billion in debt, was placed under Iran state administration last October. Most of its depositors have now seen their assets absorbed by the state-owned Bank Melli.
[T]here is an old saying in Iran: the easiest way to rob a bank is to own it.
Ansari’s ‘Ponzi Schemes’
Born in Tehran in 1962, through building special relations with the regime officials, Ansari rose from modest beginnings in manufacturing and trade to become one of Iran’s wealthiest oligarchs. He expanded into retail and construction, eventually developing the huge shopping centres like Iran Mall, said to be the world’s largest shopping mall.
His foray into banking and the “ponzi schemes” he initiated however, would sow the seeds of his downfall. In 2009 he co-founded Bank-E Tat, also under U.S. sanctions, which later merged with two credit institutions to form the Ayandeh Bank in 2014. The new lender was quickly dogged by allegations of mismanagement and self-dealing. It was funnelling over 90 percent of its deposits into projects under Ansari’s own control, including Iran Mall, Mashhad Mall, and the Rotana Hotel and other Iran state institutions, some involved with the export of Iran’s political Islam to the West.
The Central Bank of Iran warned that the bank’s practice of paying interest rates up to seven points higher than competitors to attract deposits was unsustainable—a “Ponzi-style” scheme that destabilised the broader financial sector. When the central bank finally had to intervene this autumn, Ayandeh’s debts had spiralled beyond recovery, and its license was revoked.
Built Real Estate Empire in U.K. While Bank in Iran Crumbled
While his empire in Iran crumbled, Ansari was quietly transferring his wealth abroad. Reports by Private Eye and OCCRP alleged that between 2013 and 2014, Ansari used offshore structures to build a property empire in Britain and the UAE. How he managed to pass British anti–money laundering checks remains unclear.
Under the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act, any individual linked to sanctioned regimes like Iran, should be subject to enhanced scrutiny. Yet Ansari’s investments were approved and registered without apparent challenge. The UK’s Companies House’s Due Diligence records show he was approved by an HMRC approved agent.
Because of the sanctions leveled against Ansari on October 30, he now faces an asset freeze and travel ban. He has previously held Cypriot and St Kitts & Nevis passports, and his interests span retail, construction and real estate across Iran, the UAE, and Britain.
Denies Allegations
In a previous response to OCCRP, company spokesperson said the allegations against Ansari are “baseless and emphatically denied and clearly political in nature,” and blamed “decisions and policies outside the bank’s will” for Ayandeh’s collapse.
Ayandeh Bank is just the tip of the iceberg. There are at least five more banks that have been declared to be on the edge of dissolution in Iran, whose banking system seems to be near collapse. Shervan Fashandi, a banking and finance expert of Iranian origin, based in the US, who has been following the corruption in Iran’s banks, told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI), “There seems to be a deliberate pattern here for bank founders/insiders with close ties to the regime officials. After all there is an old saying in Iran: the easiest way to rob a bank is to own it.”
As Iran’s economy buckles under sanctions and mismanagement, millions of ordinary depositors face losing their savings in Ayandeh’s collapse, likely to be followed by other banks in Iran. Yet its founder was comfortably building a property empire in the UK —a stark illustration of how impunity, both in Tehran and abroad, continues to reward the well-connected at the expense of the public.
