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A sanctioned Iranian tycoon accused by the U.K. government of funding Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) owns a 33.7 million pounds mansion—worth about $52.8 million at the 2014 exchange rate, when he bought it—on an exclusive London street, OCCRP has found.
Land registry records obtained by OCCRP show that 56-year-old Ali Ansari, also known as Aliakbar Ansari, is the registered owner of the luxury property in an upscale North London neighborhood. The documents match details in a 2017 French company filing, in which Ansari listed the mansion as his residence.
The property features three large reception rooms, an indoor swimming pool, a cinema, games rooms, a library, and eight en-suite bedrooms.
The mansion was not among previously reported U.K. real estate linked to Ansari, which includes a dozen other houses on the same street registered to Birch Ventures Limited, an Isle of Man company he owns. Those 12 properties—purchased for 73 million pounds in 2013—were first reported last month by the U.K. magazine Private Eye.
On October 30, the U.K. government sanctioned Ansari, alleging corruption and claiming he helped “financially support the activities of the IRGC.”
In a previous response to OCCRP, company spokesperson Iman Mirzaie said the allegations against Ansari are “baseless and emphatically denied and clearly political in nature.”
Ansari is now subject to a U.K. asset freeze and travel ban. He has also held Cypriot and St. Kitts & Nevis passports and owns retail and real estate assets in Iran, the U.K., and the UAE.
He held stakes in Ayandeh Bank, one of Iran’s largest private banks, created in 2012 through a merger of a private bank and two credit institutions. The bank came under scrutiny last month after it was ordered to merge with the state-owned Bank Melli following the disclosure of losses exceeding $4 billion.
In a public letter, Ansari said the bank’s operations were halted “as a result of decisions and policies made outside the bank’s will.” In October 2025, Ayandeh Bank’s license was revoked and its operations dissolved.
OCCRP contacted a law firm representing Ansari and the U.K.’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation for comment but received no response before publication.
