The Dubai Unlocked investigation involves hundreds of thousands of Dubai property records. Several people linked to Singapore’s biggest case of money laundering have been named in international reports related to the Dubai Unlocked project. They were identified as having purchased millions of dollars worth of property in Dubai alongside terrorist financiers, drug lords, and kleptocrats.
The Dubai Unlocked reports are based on a massive leak of records of hundreds of thousands of properties in Dubai and information about their ownership or usage, mostly from 2020 and 2022. The data was obtained by the Centre for Advanced Defence Studies, a non-profit organisation based in the United States, and shared with Norwegian financial outlet E24 and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which coordinated the investigations over the course of more than six months.
The leak revealed that former Afghan Parliament Speaker Mir Rahman Rahmani and his son Ajmal spent more than $15 million on real estate in Dubai. Both were sanctioned in 2023 for misappropriating US government aid, allegedly siphoning off millions of dollars in American reconstruction funds after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Nikkei Asia reported on May 15 that the leak contained the names of several people linked to sanctioned terrorist organizations. They include Adham Tabaja, an alleged member of the terrorist group Hezbollah; Qatari-based Ali al-Banai, who is believed to be part of an international network helping to finance Hezbollah’s operations; and Ali Osseiran, who is allegedly facilitating money laundering for Hezbollah through art businesses.
They all own properties in Dubai, including Ali Osseiran, who has a unit in Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper. On May 14, Rolling Stone identified several drug lords among those named in the leak.
It reported that Asadullah Khalid, a drug lord and war criminal, had purchased a home in Dubai. The former Afghan government official also owns a villa there, which he rented out for tens of thousands of dollars every month.
Uruguayan drug cartel leader Sebastian Marset, who is wanted by authorities across South America for drug trafficking, was also identified as a property owner. The leak also revealed that a pair of cryptocurrency scammers, linked to the US$4 billion (S$5.38 billion) OneCoin fraud case, managed to liquidate their Dubai properties even though they were facing criminal charges in the US.
The Dubai Unlocked reports also revealed that Su Jianfeng, who is accused of money laundering, had allegedly worked with a Singapore-based businessman to sell properties in Dubai worth tens of millions of dollars to foreigners in Singapore.
