Iranian-linked wealth has continued to find its way into London property despite years of Western sanctions, with luxury homes, apartments, and a boutique hotel tied to figures accused by British and U.S. authorities of supporting Tehran’s sanctions-evasion networks, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

London has become an important destination for Iranian money moving abroad, helped by offshore vehicles and what real-estate experts and wealth managers described as a historically permissive approach to foreign wealth, the Journal said. British anti-crime officials and financial watchdogs estimated in 2024 that more than £100 billion ($129 billion) in illicit money is laundered inside or through Britain each year, according to the report. 

Among the assets highlighted by the Journal are properties linked to Iranian banker Ali Ansari, including plots on The Bishops Avenue in north London acquired in 2018 for about £90 million through an Isle of Man entity. The report said Ansari also owns a north London mansion bought for £33.7 million in 2014 and two luxury Kensington apartments bought in 2014 and 2016 for a combined £36 million. 

Those London assets were frozen after Britain sanctioned Ansari in October 2025, accusing him of financially supporting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. A British minister described him in a government statement as a “corrupt Iranian banker and businessman,” the Journal reported. 

Ansari was the dominant shareholder in Iran’s Ayandeh Bank, a private lender that collapsed in late 2025, helping trigger deadly protests, according to the report, which also cited allegations that Ansari worked closely with senior regime figures. Ansari, through a London lawyer, told the newspaper he plans to challenge the sanctions and denied any financial relationship with the Revolutionary Guard. 

The Journal also identified the Gainsborough Hotel in London as another example of Iran-linked money reaching the British market. The hotel sold for  £6.5 million in 2018 to an entity controlled by Salim Ahmed Said, an Iraqi-British national whom the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned in July 2025, saying he had operated a network of companies helping Iran evade sanctions on oil sales since at least 2020. 

British and overseas entities have also been used to channel Iran-linked cash into the broader European market, including high-end hotels in Germany and Spain, according to the report. 

Read more at The Wall Street Journal