This story is based on an investigation by Zack Kopplin and Kevin Hall for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Delaware-based lawyer Jonathon Moore received a request in 2007 from an associate of a real estate investor scooping up commercial and residential properties in Washington, D.C.
The associate asked Moore to keep the owner’s name “off public records.”
It was a standard request in real estate. Developers and celebrities use the anonymity of Delaware LLCs to conceal information from pesky reporters, neighbors or competitors.
But this request was not from an ordinary investor. The associate was an employee of the Barzanis, the ruling family in Iraqi Kurdistan, a quasi autonomous oil-rich territory in northern Iraq, according to leaked documents reviewed by reporters with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative news outlet.
The Barzanis are the most powerful family in Kurdistan. Masrour Barzani is the region’s prime minister and three of his four brothers, Mustafa, Waysi and Mansour, have held government positions or high positions in the ruling party.
Between 2005 and 2019, Barzani-connected holding companies picked up U.S. real estate worth more than $100 million across 31 properties, according to a wide-ranging investigation led by OCCRP. Many weren’t showy, including buildings leased to Wendy’s and CVS, and a Detroit commercial property. Mostly, the properties clustered in and near D.C. Reporters visiting them noted that many were secured behind wrought-iron gates, and some were patrolled by guards in SUVs with tinted windows.
Though the total investment is not a huge amount in terms of investment in U.S. real estate, the details of the transactions provide an unusually close look at the formation of offshore LLCs and how attorneys navigate buyers tied to foreign governments through the sales or financing process.
At least some of the spending on property originated with Golden Eagle Global and Ster Group, two prominent Kurdish companies, financial records show. The leaked documents point repeatedly to Mustafa Barzani as the man behind Golden Eagle Global, while Masrour Barzani appears to be behind Ster Group.
Such ties could be politically sensitive by suggesting that the leadership of a still developing economy is parking its resources elsewhere.
Of the 31 properties connected to the Barzanis in the United States, at least 13 have been sold; the remaining 18 are still held by the companies that acquired them.
OCCRP reporters used leaked documents, property records and lawsuits to show how the Barzanis used Moore to conceal their ownership interests. The reporters also surfaced other details about the family and their businesses, both in the U.S. and abroad. The Real Deal participated in the OCCRP’s investigation.
Contacted by reporters for comment, lawyers for Masrour Barzani, Iraqi Kurdistan’s prime minister, said he “vehemently rejects” any wrongdoing. They did not respond to questions about potential conflicts of interest.
“His fervent commitment to anti-corruption and anti-terrorism measures is a matter of record,” they said, pointing to an anti-corruption and transparency initiative Barzani announced in September 2024.
There is “nothing unlawful about the ownership of property in other jurisdictions,” the lawyers wrote, adding that “it is neither uncommon nor unreasonable for wealthy, high profile individuals to protect their privacy and security.”
Moore did not address specific questions from reporters in an emailed response. The other four Barzani brothers did not respond to requests to comment to the OCCRP.
Lawyers for Ster Group’s former owners said that the company’s money transfers to the Barzanis and their companies represented currency exchanges or other legitimate transactions and were fully legal. They also said neither they nor Ster Group had ever been “fronts for anyone or any organisation.”
Hiding treasure
Moore came up with a plan to ensure the Barzani name would no longer appear in public records, according to charts and a leaked memo reviewed by reporters: Each of the five Barzani brothers would own a British Virgin Islands-based company named after a different captain from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Mustafa’s LLC took on the name of the franchise’s anti-hero, Jack Sparrow. Masrour’s company had Sparrow’s father, Edward Teague.
Mustafa and Masrour Barzani, as well as the fifth brother, Muksi, used the BVI companies to own U.S. companies. These were mostly incorporated in Delaware or Virginia, which allow anonymous ownership.
The OCCRP corroborated much of this information with other collections of leaked documents and publicly available records from property and corporate registers in the U.S., the British Virgin Islands and elsewhere.
Among the Barzani family’s more notable acquisitions was Casa Divina, a home in Great Falls, Virginia. The property sits on a 5-acre estate and has a home cinema and Corinthian-style columns. Mustafa Barazni bought it through an LLC for $5.6 million in 2013.
Masrour Barzani acquired the building that houses the CVS, which is in Miami Beach, for $18.3 million in February 2019. Three months later, he became prime minister.
While it is not illegal or uncommon to acquire real estate for personal use through companies or offshore structures, the practice can obscure the origin of the funds used to purchase it at a time when U.S. banks have to comply with increasingly strict transparency rules for clients.
In this case, financial records included in the leak show that at least $29 million of the spending spree originated with two Kurdish companies: GEG, which is a construction and advertising company, and Ster Group, a conglomerate in construction and soft drinks distribution, among other businesses.
Documents in the leak depict GEG as a facilitator for foreign companies seeking to make deals with local companies in Kurdistan or obtain government approvals in the territory.
Several specialists in corruption and illicit finance reviewed reporters’ findings and raised concerns. The Barzanis’ transactions with Kurdistan companies “seem to imply confusion between their roles as public servants and their private wealth,” according to Jodi Vittori, a professor and co-chair of global politics and security at Georgetown University who reviewed reporters’ findings.
Leaked communications show that keeping the family name out of real estate transactions was a concern.
Muksi Barzani, the only brother without any reported role in Kurdish politics, was the most prolific property buyer among the siblings. Close to $60 million of real estate was purchased through companies that corporate records show he controlled.
A biography distributed to potential lenders described him as “an independent investor having received investment funds in the form of gifts from his family from their overseas construction business.”
In one instance in 2012, a potential U.S. lender asked for background information on Muksi to comply with anti-money laundering rules that require enhanced scrutiny of people with political connections, known in industry jargon as “politically exposed people,” or PEPs.
Moore wrote to his assistant to express concern about the request
“I’m afraid that if we reveal that his father is the president (or whatever the top guy is called) of the Kurdistan regional government, we will be into a lengthy PEP due diligence,” Moore wrote.
In a later email on the same topic, he added: “We will be truthful, but we don’t want to send them scurrying down the path of a full-blown investigation of a PEP.” The correspondence does not reveal whether Muksi’s family ties were, in the end, disclosed.
Built in Kurdistan
In Iraqi Kurdistan, the Barzani name has been synonymous with power for decades.
Family patriarch Masoud Barzani is the son of a prominent Kurdish nationalist fighter who led a rebellion against Iraqi authorities from the 1940s through the 1970s. Masoud took up his father’s mantle, leading Kurdish peshmerga fighters against Saddam Hussein’s government during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
The Kurds, an ethnic group that spans three neighboring countries, were able to carve out a degree of autonomy in Iraq after a U.S.-led coalition imposed a no-fly zone over the north of the country in 1991. The Barzani-led ruling party, the KDP, then fought a brutal civil war with a rival faction — during which it even briefly allied with Saddam’s forces — and eventually emerged as the region’s dominant political force.
The KDP and the Barzanis maintain that power today. Masoud Barzani stepped down as president in 2017 and was succeeded by his nephew, Nechirvan.
The region officially gained semi-autonomous status after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and the Barzanis have since positioned themselves as close U.S. allies. Washington has provided substantial military and financial assistance to the region’s government to support the peshmerga against the Islamic State jihadist group, and maintains an air base in the region’s capital, Erbil.
The Iraqi Kurdish government and the KDP have tried to cement their influence with U.S. policymakers, including by working with lobbyists. President Joe Biden used to boast that he “knew the names of every grandchild of Masoud Barzani,” former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told the New York Times in 2020.
“They helped us fight ISIS,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan, said. A former intelligence officer who served three tours in Iraq, Slotkin has known Barzani for years and met with him in Washington. “They took a ton of losses,” she said, “That’s important. That means something to me.”
All five brothers had the right to stay in the United States, the leaked documents show, whether by holding U.S. nationality, a green card, or a multiple-entry visa permitting them to conduct business in the country.
The firms
The leaked documents reveal the Barzani family’s links to two firms: Ster Group, an Iraqi Kurdish conglomerate, and Golden Eagle Global, or GEG, and several affiliates. Each appears when tracking Barzani property holdings in the U.S.
Ster Group was set up in 2002 by Sarwar Pedawi, an Iraqi Kurd who grew up partly in the Netherlands. After Saddam Hussein was toppled the following year, Ster’s business boomed. Among other ventures, the company has said it became the exclusive local distributor for Coca-Cola products. It set itself up as the region’s first internet provider and built Erbil’s first skyscraper. It also claimed to be in the oil and pharmaceutical sectors.
(In response to reporters’ requests for comment, lawyers for Sarwar Pedawi and his brother — a co-shareholder in Ster for many years — said they ceased being involved in Ster Group in 2018. Reporters were unable to obtain Kurdish corporate records that would confirm the company’s current owners.)
Pedawi served as an economic policy adviser to then-President Masoud Barzani. Some observers believed that the Barzanis’ ties to Ster ran deeper. A 2008 U.S. State Department cable, leaked years later, cited a source claiming that Masrour Barzani was the company’s hidden majority shareholder. (His lawyers told OCCRP that the cable was “antiquated speculation … based on an entirely false premise.”)
Moore’s leaked emails show that Ster Group or its top representatives provided over $18 million in funding used to purchase property and cover expenses for the Barzani brothers. Wire transfer receipts and bank statements document $7.2 million of these transfers, while letters drafted by Moore’s law office reference a further $11.1 million from Ster.
Ster Group, the Kurdish conglomerate, also covered other high-end purchases for other brothers, including expensive crystal decorative objects by Lalique and a $340,000 Ferrari for Mustafa.
In addition to the $18 million in funding, leaked documents suggest Ster Group’s official owners were also involved in dealings over a luxury property linked with Masrour and Muksi Barzani.
In October 2010, a company registered in Virginia by Sarwar Pedawi and his brother Laween bought a $10.2 million home in McLean, Virginia, built in the style of a 15th-century French chateau.
While neither Barzani brother was named in the property records, Moore’s leaked billing files show that the cost of renovations at the property in June 2019 were charged to Masrour Barzani. Earlier communications about the property used the subject line “Masrour.”
In 2024 the home was transferred — at no cost — to an anonymously owned Virginia company called Cove Hollow, according to Virginia property records. The absence of a payment amount could indicate either a gift or shifting of assets between related companies. Moore’s records show Muksi Barzani was billed for corporate administration for Cove Hollow.
Neither the lawyers for Masrour Barzani nor those for the Pedawi brothers addressed OCCRP’s questions on the matter. Muksi Barzani did not reply to written questions.
Similarly, the Golden Eagle Global conglomerate — GEG — has no publicly disclosed ownership ties to the Barzani family. But the documents show its role in financing the Barzani brothers. In addition to the Kurdish GEG companies, two U.S. legal entities use the name: Golden Eagle Global, Inc., founded in Delaware as a subsidiary of the Kurdish conglomerate, which has made some Barzani family purchases; and GEGI Management LLC, registered in Washington DC in 2009 “for the sole purpose of maintaining an administrative bank account to receive Barzani family funds,” according to a “control sheet” found in the leaked files.
Emails from Moore’s law office, sent to potential lenders in connection with Barzani property purchases, refer to GEG Kurdistan as the “family business.” And in November 2020, in response to due diligence questions from a BVI corporate services provider, Moore listed Golden Eagle Global corporation and its affiliated advertising company, GEG Reklam, as the source of business income for both Masrour and Mansour Barzani.
“The capital for the down payment will come from family money,” Moore’s assistant wrote in an October 2012 email to a potential lender during negotiations for a property purchase by Muksi Barzani. “Mr. Barzani’s family is in the construction business in Kurdistan, and quite wealthy.”
A September 2020 internal memo, prepared by Moore on the Barzanis’ tax issues, states that funds were regularly transferred from Kurdistan to GEGI Management. In the memo, Moore wrote that “Mustafa is the sole owner of GEGI,” and describes the company as “a vehicle for paying out family expenses.”
While the 2020 memo did not name the Kurdish entity that sent the funds, an earlier memo from Moore identifies GEG Kurdistan as the source of transfers to the United States.
Mustafa appears to have used this structure to pay for at least three properties, worth over $10 million. In the case of Casa Divina, for instance, tax preparation documents from Moore’s law firm show that the funding was disclosed as a foreign gift. Banking documents show the money was routed through an account held by Moore’s law firm which was identified in internal documents as holding GEGI funds.
According to leaked documents, GEGI Management also handled many of the family’s other personal expenses, including hospital bills, designer clothes and handbags, and jewelry. In 2012, GEGI Management’s account was used to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in charges on American Express “Black cards” held by Masrour Barzani and other brothers. In 2023, the account was used to pay a $41,000 bill to a nanny placement agency on behalf of Waysi Barzani.
Masrour Barzani’s lawyers declined to comment on specific financial transactions, but noted on the topic of money being transferred from Iraqi Kurdistan that “lawful commercial financial activity by businesses and individuals requires currency traders, or other third parties.”