Less than four years after paying $27 million for the property, Kurdistan’s ruling family is putting one of their two Beverly Hills mansions back up for sale. And with eight bedrooms, 16 bathrooms and every conceivable residential amenity packed into nearly 21,000 square feet of gilt-trimmed living space, this place is guaranteed to make even the most humble owner feel like a princely pasha.
Located in the prime Beverly Hills Flats neighborhood and built new in 2016, the house was sold in September 2018 to the Barzani family, an enormously wealthy clan that has been the de facto ruler of Iraq’s Kurdistan region for generations. Now returning to the market at just under $30 million, the giant house sits behind gates on an unusually deep 0.72-acre lot, the property itself set mid-block on one of the most coveted streets in the Flats.
Although the mansion has long been connected to the Barzanis, It’s still not entirely clear which family member is the actual owner. But by far the most obvious candidate is Mansour Barzani, a globetrotting and big-spending son of Masoud Barzani, who was president of Kurdistan from 2005-2017. Mansour is also the brother of Masrour Barzani, Kurdistan’s current prime minister.
This isn’t the only Barzani-linked Los Angeles mansion. In summer 2018, an Iranian woman named Sodabeh Khoshdaman paid exactly $20 million for a house elsewhere in Beverly Hills. Other media outlets have referred to Khoshdaman as Mansour Barzani’s “second wife,” and have revealed that she and Barzani also maintain lavish homes in Dubai.
Land registry records also show that Khoshdaman owns a mansion on a prime street in Kensington, arguably London’s poshest neighborhood. After buying that villa in 2016 for roughly $14 million USD, Khoshdaman gutted it and has been engaged on a multiyear, multimillion-dollar rebuild and expansion of the structure.
As for the Beverly Hills manor, it’s a veritable monument to neoclassical opulence. Beyond the elaborate moldings and Louis XV-inspired furniture, there are two family rooms, a kitchen with top-of-the-line Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances, a commercial-grade elevator, gym, a wood-paneled library and multiple imported fireplaces, per the listing. All of the bedrooms feature ensuite full bathrooms, and the property is outfitted with the most advanced security, lighting and sound systems on the market.
Beyond all that, there’s also a two-lane bowling alley, an indoor basketball court, a beauty salon and a master suite with its own outdoor jacuzzi on a private terrace. The movie theater flaunts a fiberoptic starry sky, akin to a new Rolls Royce, and at the far rear of the lot lies a detached guesthouse. John Yarborough at Compass holds the listing.
The Barzanis can well afford their worldwide real estate indulgences. According to investigative journalist Zack Kopplin, who has exhaustively studied the family’s holdings and foreign assets, they are worth billions today — “probably in 11 figures.” Critics have claimed that much of this wealth stems from the Barzanis’ virtual monopoly on the Kurdistan region’s telecom, real estate and vast oil resources.
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