Slain Iranian Official’s Sons Hold $29M in Dubai Property Using Assumed Names

Scoop

Hossein Shamkhani is sanctioned for allegedly running a shipping empire that generated billions of dollars for Iran and Russia. OCCRP has found that he and his brother own Dubai real estate under aliases in Caribbean passports.

Banner: Philippe Turpin/Photononstop/Photononstop via AFP

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Reported by

James Dowsett

OCCRP

Kelly Bloss

OCCRP

Mahtab Divsalar

OCCRP

March 19, 2026

A sanctioned Iranian oil magnate and his brother have used aliases and Caribbean “golden passports” to amass a $29 million luxury real estate portfolio in Dubai, property records show. 

Hossein Shamkhani and his brother, Abolfazl, are the sons of Ali Shamkhani, a political adviser to Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Their father was killed during recent U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that claimed the lives of Khamenei and other top officials, according to ILNA, a semi-official Iranian news agency.

Hossein Shamkhani was hit with U.S. and EU sanctions in July 2025 for allegedly generating billions of dollars in oil revenue for the regimes in Tehran and Moscow. He was identified by the U.S. Treasury as a citizen of Dominica, under the name “Hugo Hayek.”

OCCRP has now found that his younger brother Abolfazl — who has not been sanctioned — has also obtained a Dominica passport under the name “Sami Hayek.” 

United Arab Emirates property records obtained by OCCRP show that the brothers are the listed owners of no fewer than four luxury Dubai villas. At the time of acquisition, these properties were worth nearly $29 million. They hold the properties under their Caribbean identities.

Neither Hossein Shamkhani nor his brother Abolfazl responded to requests for comment. 

A man who answered a call to a phone number listed in Dubai property records for Sami Hayek said it was a “wrong number.” When told that the number appeared in the records, the man said: “I don’t care, okay. Thank you, bye.”

Calls to a phone number listed for “Hugo Hayek” in Dubai property records went unanswered.

Civil Forfeiture

The U.S. Treasury Department’s July 2025 sanctions notice claimed that Shamkhani leveraged “corruption through his father’s political influence… to build and operate a massive fleet of tankers and containerships.”

According to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) the Shamkhani family funeled this “ill-gotten wealth” into “exclusive properties around the world and obtaining foreign passports in exchange for substantial financial investments.” 

“These passports allow them to travel undetected and hide their connections to Iran when conducting business overseas in furtherance of their corrupt schemes,” OFAC added in a statement.

Following U.S. and EU sanctions, the U.K. sanctioned Hossein in August 2025 for allegedly supporting the Iranian regime’s “hostile activity.

The financial crackdown coincides with a sharp escalation in military tensions.  

Just after the U.S. began battering Iran with missiles, American prosecutors launched a legal attack against the brothers.

Credit: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu/Anadolu via AFP

Smoke rises over Tehran’s residential areas amid ongoing U.S.-Israeli strikes on March 1, 2026.

On March 6, the U.S. Department of Justice filed two civil forfeiture actions in federal court in Washington, D.C., targeting accounts holding more than $15.3 million. The Justice Department alleges the accounts are part of “a network of individuals, front companies, shipping companies, and financial institutions” led by Hossein Shamkhani. 

U.S. authorities seized these funds in early 2026 after Hossein’s alleged “front companies” attempted wire transfers through the U.S. financial system. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that her country has “zero tolerance for foreign actors using the U.S. financial system to prop up our nation’s enemies.”

While Hossein’s brother, Abolfazl Shamkhani, is not personally under sanctions, prosecutors allege he manages several firms belonging to the network. These include a front company responsible for $2 million of seized wire transfers. He has not been criminally charged, but court filings in the forfeiture case reveal that Abolfazl uses multiple aliases, including“Hassan Shamkhani” and “Sami Hayek.” 

Credit: Composite by James O’Brien/OCCRP

 Left: A 2015 article from the Daily Shipping Times, an Indian trade publication, showing Abolfazl Shamkhani (second from right) – under the name “Hassan Shamkhani” – with his brother, Hossein Shamkhani (far left). Right: Abolfazl Shamkhani’s headshot from a 2006-07 yearbook for Lebanon American University in Beirut, where the brothers earned degrees.

‘Enhanced Life’

UAE property records show the brothers initially used their Iranian names to acquire high-end Dubai real estate. “Mohammad Hossein Sham Khani” and “Abolfazl Ali Shamkhani” were listed as the buyers of two villas in the exclusive Golf Place complex, three doors down from one another, in July 2019.

A marketing catalogue describes the development as a “luxury villa community” featuring “lush fairways, winding walkways, meticulously landscaped parks and gardens, as well as vast open spaces that would enhance the life of every resident.”

The villa purchased by Abolfazl is featured on the website of a design firm that claimed to have worked on the property for a “private client” in 2022. Photos show sleek, luxury interiors, a sumptuous terrace with outdoor lounges and entertaining spaces, and an azure swimming pool overlooking a sprawling golf course.

Credit: Screenshot/villaandmore.com

Abolfazl villas featured on a design firm website.

Reporters found that the titles for these neighboring villas are now listed under the names in their Dominica passports — “Hugo Hayek” and “Sami Hayek” — but could not confirm when these changes occurred.

Subsequent real estate purchases were made directly under these Dominica aliases. 

In July 2022, Hossein used the Dominican passport to purchase a villa on Jumeirah Bay Island, an exclusive, man-made, seahorse-shaped neighborhood off Dubai’s waterfront. In October of that year, Abolfazl used the name Sami Hayek to buy a luxury residence in the same area, property data shows. They are still owned by the brothers under the aliases.

It is not clear whether the brothers still hold the Dominican passports, however. Authorities of the island nation reportedly revoked Hossein Shamkhani’s passport in response to the U.S. sanctions. Dominican authorities did not respond to a request for comment.

Bros By Different Names

The Shamkhani brothers’ use of the “Hayek” aliases has extended beyond personal real estate assets. 

Abolfazl’s alias, Sami Hayek, also appears in European corporate records. In Cyprus corporate filings dated November 2024, he used his Dominica passport and his residence address at the Golf Place villa address  in Dubai to register as a limited partner at Saleya Fund RAIF LP, a Cypriot-incorporated “alternative investment fund.” There is no public information about the fund’s activities, and it has yet to file accounts in Cyprus.

The brothers’ Dominica identities also appear in corporate records for a company that OFAC sanctioned for helping ship oil for Russia and Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.

Company records list Hugo and Sami Hayek among the founding shareholders of the Turkish firm Green Energy Chemicals Enerji Kimyasallari Sanayi Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, incorporated in 2021. The brothers transferred their shares in the firm to the Dubai-based Milavous Group Ltd in November 2023, the records show.

In July 2025, OFAC sanctioned the Turkish firm and Milavous Group, alleging that the parent company helped Hossein Shamkhani in “arranging sales of Iranian oil and gas and laundering the proceeds” and “disguising the Iranian and Russian origin of the oil it sold.” 

The EU has also imposed sanctions on Milavous Group over similar allegations that Shamkhani has used it to conceal the origin of Russian oil, while the U.K. sanctioned the firm due to its alleged links to the Iranian oil magnate.

In March, U.S. prosecutors levelled a more direct charge in the civil forfeiture complaints, labeling Milavous Group “de facto corporate holding or management company for many of the Shamkhani associated businesses.” 

In a statement to Bloomberg, Hossein Shamkhani said he had “neither founded nor owned” Milavous Group and denied having “any role” in the company’s management.  He said he does not own any oil firms, and only operates in countries “not under sanctions,” Bloomberg reported.   

In one of the U.S. civil forfeiture complaints, American prosecutors alleged that Hossein “entrusted his brother” to run parts of the Dubai-based company known as Admiral Group, which the EU sanctioned last year. 

Hossein “uses the company to transport and sell Russian crude oil,” the EU said in its sanctions notice.

Fact-checking was provided by the OCCRP Fact-Checking Desk. Research and data expertise was provided by OCCRP’s Research & Data Team.