DUBAI/ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON, D.C./ZÜRICH (The Thursday Times) — Officials in Pakistan have tried in recent years to unearth details of Pakistani citizens who own assets in Dubai to bring undeclared assets and income into the tax net. Yet, progress has been minimal. Dubai authorities are reluctant to share even basic information, such as the number of Pakistani citizens with Dubai residence visas, known as iqamas or Emirates IDs. Pakistan’s lack of geopolitical clout further complicates its ability to demand this information.
Today, a significant volume of leaked property data, including over 17,000 properties listed as belonging to Pakistani nationals up to the spring of 2022, is now accessible to journalists from numerous media outlets worldwide. This data provides a detailed overview of hundreds of thousands of properties in Dubai and their ownership or usage, largely from 2020 and 2022. The data was obtained by the Center for Advanced Defence Studies (C4ADS), a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organisation that researches international crime and conflict. It was then shared with Norwegian financial outlet E24 and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which coordinated an investigative project with media outlets globally.
The list includes political figures, globally sanctioned individuals, alleged money launderers, and criminals. Pakistanis have also been identified on the list, and their combined value has been estimated at around $11 billion. The project, ‘Dubai Unlocked,’ is based on data providing a detailed overview of hundreds of thousands of properties in Dubai and their ownership or usage, largely from 2020 and 2022. Properties purchased in the name of companies and those in commercial areas are not part of this analysis. The data was obtained by the Centre for Advanced Defence Studies (C4ADS), a non-profit organisation based in Washington, D.C. It was then shared with Norwegian financial outlet E24 and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which coordinated a six-month investigative project with reporters from 74 media outlets in 58 countries, uncovering scores of convicted criminals, fugitives, and political figures who have recently owned at least one piece of real estate in Dubai.
Among the Pakistanis listed in the Property Leaks are President Asif Ali Zardari’s three children, Hussain Nawaz Sharif, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi’s wife, Sharjeel Memon and his family members, Senator Faisal Vawda, four MNAs, and half a dozen MPAs from the Sindh and Balochistan assemblies. The Pakistani list also features the late Gen Pervez Musharraf, former prime minister Shaukat Aziz, and more than a dozen retired generals, as well as a police chief, an ambassador, and a scientist – all of whom owned properties either directly or through their spouses and children.
In January 2018, President Asif Ali Zardari revised his wealth statement for tax years 2014-2016. He wanted to declare foreign property he had received as a gift four years earlier, around the time the Supreme Court had taken suo-motu notice of the undeclared foreign assets of Pakistanis. By the time he declared it, Zardari had gifted it to someone else. When questioned by the Joint Investigation Team set up to investigate money laundering allegations against him, he said he might have gifted it to his daughter but did not provide this in writing despite insistence.
In 2014, a business tycoon co-accused with Zardari in the fake accounts case, Abdul Ghani Majid, declared in his wealth statement that he had granted a gift of Rs329 million but neither mentioned its type nor the recipient. The JIT, however, recovered a memo about the purchase in March 2014 of a penthouse in Dubai. The Property Leaks data has now unveiled that Ghani had gifted this property to Zardari, who then gifted it to his daughter.
The Altaf Khanani network, which was sanctioned by the US for involvement in money laundering, has also surfaced on the list. His son, daughter, brother, and nephew are listed owners of several properties in Dubai. Three of them are facing sanctions. Another notable character is Hamid Mukhtar Shah, a Rawalpindi-based physician sanctioned by the US for his involvement in the kidnapping, detention, and removal of kidneys from Pakistani laborers. He is listed as the owner of scores of properties.
The Property Leaks have also revealed that Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi’s wife owns a property in Dubai which he did not declare in the nomination papers he submitted in March this year for the Senate election. Per the Property Leaks data, Naqvi’s wife owns a five-bedroom villa in the Arabian Ranches. She received a rental income of AED600,000 (Rs45 million) from this villa, which was purchased in August 2017 for AED4,347,888 (Rs329 million). The villa remained in her ownership until April 2023 when it was sold for AED4,550,000 (Rs344 million) as per the record.
According to the data leak assessed by economists and reporters, the number of residential properties owned by foreigners in Dubai places Indians first, with 35,000 properties and 29,700 owners. The total value of these properties is estimated at $17 billion that same year. Owners with Pakistani nationality come second among foreigners with 17,000 owners of 23,000 residential properties, followed by UK citizens and Saudi nationals. Among the Pakistani owners, the average value per owner is estimated at $0.41 million (Rs11.40 million). The combined value of the properties of Pakistanis has been estimated at around $11 billion (Rs30 trillion), whereas the total value of properties of 204 nationalities is $386 billion (Rs1073.70 trillion).
The Property Leaks data includes the controlling party of each property, as well as other identifying information such as his or her date of birth, passport number, and nationality. In some cases, the data captured renters instead of owners, as it mostly came from official government documents and publicly owned
utility companies. The project’s reporters have only revealed the names of owners in cases that serve the public interest. This includes property owners convicted or accused of crimes, facing sanctions, or public officials or their associates, including those accused of corruption or who have kept their properties hidden from the public.
Journalists used the data as a starting point to explore the landscape of foreign property ownership in Dubai. They spent months verifying the identities of the people who appeared in the leaked data, as well as confirming their ownership status, using official records, open-source research, and other leaked datasets. Reporters only included people in the project if their identities could be independently confirmed through other sources. Dubai’s official land registry was also used to ascertain whether individuals appearing in the data remain property owners. In some cases, reporters could not determine current ownership status, usually because a property had been recently sold. In those cases, extra efforts were made to confirm that the person did own property in Dubai, including combing through real estate transactions and rental databases.
Emirates Hills, the hyper-exclusive gated collection of mansions in the middle of Dubai, has had some noteworthy residents over the years. Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, ex-president of South Africa Jacob Zuma, and the family of the late Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe have all called the area home at one stage.
In 2022, the community of property owners was joined, on paper at least, by members of the Kinahans, the Irish crime family behind one of the biggest narcotics gangs in Europe. Christopher Kinahan and his sons Daniel and Christopher Jr. have been hiding out in Dubai for almost a decade, having permanently moved there during the Hutch-Kinahan feud that resulted in the murders of 18 people, mostly on the Hutch side, since 2015. Shortly after arriving, as Daniel was trying to establish himself as a legitimate figure in the world of professional boxing, they publicly started buying up property in Dubai. In 2022, the 2,238 sq m Emirates Hills mansion, complete with indoor and outdoor pools, parking for six cars, and an internal lift, came under the control of Kinahan’s wife, Caoimhe Martina Robinson, leaked records show. The 42-year-old, from Darndale in Dublin, married Kinahan in a lavish Dubai ceremony in 2017. The wedding doubled as a summit for Europe’s leading narco-criminals. Robinson, who was previously in a relationship with murdered gangland figure Michael “Panda” Kelly, is not herself suspected of involvement in organised crime.
Sweeping US sanctions, announced with some public fanfare in April 2022, target the senior leadership of the Kinahan gang and anyone conducting business with them. In addition, US authorities have offered a reward of $15 million for information leading to the conviction of three senior leaders. The public attention from the sanctions has made it far more difficult, but by no means impossible, for the gang to run their narcotic and weapons smuggling business from Dubai. With the sanctions starting to bite, members of the family and their associates have been forced to sell millions of euros worth of property, records show.
Dubai Unlocked is an international investigation into the owners of real estate in Dubai. With its ritzy beach clubs, high-end shopping, and ultramodern skyline, the Gulf city is known as a playground for the world’s rich and famous. But slippery regulations have also turned its property market into a magnet for another class of global elites: alleged criminals, fugitives, political figures, and sanctioned individuals seeking to stash their money abroad. Dubai Unlocked, a collaboration involving more than 70 media outlets, reveals who owns what in the Middle Eastern financial hub and how the city has opened its doors to hundreds of people accused of criminality around the globe.
Dubai has for years been flagged as a major destination for laundering illicit cash, particularly through its real estate market. While other investigations have focused on the property holdings of those from specific regions and countries, Dubai Unlocked is the first project of its kind to look at ownership in the city on a global scale. It is also based on more up-to-date data, thanks to a new set of leaked property records largely from 2022 and 2020. Reporters have identified scores of Dubai property owners who they believe it is in the public interest to write about, ranging from alleged money launderers and drug lords to political figures accused of corruption and businessmen sanctioned for financing terrorism.
Dubai is not the only city where criminals and kleptocrats have been known to clean their cash through real estate. But experts say it has several points of appeal — particularly for those on the run from Western law enforcement or sanctions. Until recently, the United Arab Emirates lacked extradition treaties with many countries, making it a go-to destination for fugitives from around the globe. While authorities have increased cooperation with foreign law enforcement in recent years, it is still known for inconsistent responses to extradition requests. According to Radha Stirling, an attorney and human rights advocate who leads the legal assistance organization Detained in Dubai, UAE authorities use high-profile suspects as “bargaining chips.” Even if they claim to have arrested people or frozen their assets, these may just be for press release purposes, she said.
Some of Dubai’s real estate agents have also cultivated a reputation for asking minimal questions about the origins of their clients’ funds. Until 2022, real estate agents, brokers, and lawyers were not obligated to report large cash or cryptocurrency transactions to authorities. Finally, the city’s property market is one of the world’s hottest, providing a vast array of investment opportunities across its fast-changing skyline. With property values on the rise, real estate investments offer a way to not only launder illicit funds but to make additional profits. The city’s policies have the second-order effect of ensuring that the assets of all these parties appreciate in value across time, said Colin Powers, a senior fellow and chief editor for the Noria MENA Program, an independent non-profit research organisation.
The property records at the heart of this project come from multiple data leaks, mostly from the Dubai Land Department, as well as publicly owned utility companies. Taken together, the data provides a detailed overview of hundreds of thousands of properties in Dubai and information about their ownership or usage, largely from 2020 and 2022. The data was obtained by the Center for Advanced Defence Studies (C4ADS), a non-profit organisation based in Washington, D.C., that researches international crime and conflict. It was then shared with Norwegian financial outlet E24 and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which coordinated an investigative project with dozens of media outlets from around the world.
The data includes the controlling party of each property, as well as other identifying information such as his or her date of birth, passport number, and nationality. In some cases, the data captured renters instead of owners. According to economists at The EU Tax Observatory and Norway’s Centre for Tax Research who analysed the leaked data, foreign ownership in Dubai’s housing market was worth an estimated $160 billion in 2022. For this project, we chose to highlight around 200 people, including alleged criminals, fugitives, political figures, and sanctioned individuals, who have owned more than 1,000 properties that we found in the data and subsequently verified.
Journalists used the data as a starting point to explore the landscape of foreign property ownership in Dubai. They spent months verifying the identities of the people who appeared in the leaked data, as well as confirming their ownership status, using official records, open-source research, and other leaked datasets. Reporters only included people in the project if their identities could be independently confirmed through other sources. Dubai’s official land registry was also used to ascertain whether individuals appearing in the data remain property owners. In some cases, reporters could not determine current ownership status, usually because a property had been recently sold. In those circumstances, extra efforts were made to confirm that the person had owned a property in Dubai, such as checking their passport information against a public government database of property owners.
Reporters have only revealed the owners of Dubai properties in cases that serve the public interest. This includes property owners who have been convicted or accused of crimes, are facing sanctions, or are public officials or their associates, including those accused of corruption or who have kept their properties hidden from the public. We have chosen not to write about celebrities or other private individuals who do not meet these criteria.
The UAE dealt a major reputational blow in March 2022 when it was flagged by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global anti-money laundering watchdog, for deficiencies in its systems to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The move, which threatened to tarnish Dubai’s reputation as a premier center of finance, sparked a concerted effort by UAE authorities to tighten legislation and increase
cooperation with foreign law enforcement on extradition. According to UAE authorities, real estate agents, brokers, and corporate service providers have stepped up reporting of suspicious transactions, while the total value of fines imposed by anti-money laundering authorities has increased threefold since 2022. However, the number of reported transactions still represents a tiny fraction of deals made, and the reporting obligations for realtors currently only apply to sales, leaving the city’s rental activities as a black hole.
UAE officials — including at the ministries of interior, economy, and justice — and Dubai Police did not respond to detailed questions about the project’s findings, but the country’s embassies in the U.K. and Norway sent a brief response to reporters, saying that the country takes its role in protecting the integrity of the global financial system extremely seriously. In its continuing pursuit of global criminals, the UAE works closely with international partners to disrupt and deter all forms of illicit finance, the statement added. The UAE is committed to continuing these efforts and actions more than ever today and over the longer term.
