RICH LIST: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Hidden Empire

At Whale Hunting, we don’t just publish stories—we run long-haul investigations we call Expeditions. These are deep, evolving hunts into the hidden architecture of power: who has it, how they got it, and what they’re hiding. The Unauthorized Rich List is one of those expeditions. It’s our effort to map the world’s most concealed fortunes—wealth built in the shadows, shielded by shell companies, proxies, and someetimes the threat of violence.

Today, we’re back—with a timely, new Rich List entry about the outwardly pious but power-hungry Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. More Expeditions are underway—the hunt for Jho Low, and the ongoing investigation into Havana Syndrome (check out the latest exploration of microwave weapons here), and live investigations unfolding in real time as video podcasts on our network.

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Ali Khamenei: Two Faces of Wealth and Power

One Tehran morning not long after Iran’s 1979 revolution, a widowed mother opened her door to find officials from an organization she had never heard of – Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrat-e Emam (Setad) – demanding she surrender her family home. The woman, Pari Vahdat-e-Hagh, was a member of Iran’s persecuted Bahá’í minority. She had already lost her husband, who was arrested in 1981 and later executed for his faith. Now these men insisted that her apartment was “abandoned” property belonging to the Supreme Leader’s office. When she refused to leave, one Setad agent clenched his fist as if to strike her. “One even had his fist balled up to punch me,” she recalled. “I told them, ‘You can come and kill me’.” Ultimately, Setad confiscated and auctioned off her family’s properties. In one case, it sold her daughter’s apartment to a Revolutionary Court official at a steep discount – and that official flipped it for profit within a month. The defiant widow’s story is just one example of how Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has quietly built a vast financial empire on the seizure of ordinary people’s assets.