Real Estate Deal With Royal Raises Questions About Drug Trafficker Raffaele Imperiale’s Business in Dubai

The son of Dubai’s ruler owned a majority stake in a real estate firm formerly chaired by convicted Italian drug trafficker Raffalele Imperiale. 

The company, AA Real Estate Development, which built luxury villas in the Emirati city-state, is one of several real estate firms Imperiale was involved in during the 2010s, when he was a fugitive from Italian justice hiding out in Dubai. 

In addition to serving as chairman of the board of directors for AA Real Estate Development, Imperiale also owned a stake in it through a local company, along with several other Italian and Emirati citizens.  

But he stepped down as chairman about a month after Spanish authorities issued a warrant for Imperiale’s arrest and requested his extradition in August 2014. 

At the same time, the company through which Imperiale and his co-investors held their shares in AA Real Estate Development transferred its entire 49-percent stake to another company managed by an Italian man named Mario Sarnataro. Imperiale later told Italian prosecutors that Sarnatero had once worked for him, and had served as his proxy in another real estate deal.

Then, the following year, that company went into business with Sheikh Marwan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, whose father is Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler since 2006. 

The younger Al Maktoum signed a contract in November 2015 to acquire a majority stake in AA Real Estate Development, according to a copy of the signed contract obtained by OCCRP, IrpiMedia, and RTL Nieuws.

The agreement was also signed by Imperiale — acting as a representative of Atef Karrani, who had held the other 51 percent of the company. 

Karrani was a former manager at Dubai’s Land Department, which oversees the real estate sector, and had co-owned the company since it was created. At the time, foreigners starting companies in Dubai were required to have a local partner. When Al Maktoum signed the contract in 2015, he took over Karrani’s shares. 

Karrani declined to comment on selling his shares in AA Real Estate Development, and why Imperiale acted on his behalf in the deal. 

Sarnataro, who has no known charges against him, did not respond to requests for comment. 

It’s not known how much the prince paid for the stake, or whether he was aware that Imperiale was a wanted drug trafficker at the time. 

Al Maktoum did not respond to repeated requests for comment. 

‘Masquerading’ in Real Estate

Originally from Naples, the home of the Camorra crime group, Imperiale moved to Amsterdam in the early 1990s. He got into the drug business in the Netherlands, and soon became a major cocaine supplier for the Camorra. 

Imperiale moved to Spain around 2006, and by 2010 he was living in Dubai, according to “Il Narcos,” a book written by the lead Italian investigator in his case.

In his new home in the Gulf emirate, Imperiale presented himself as a real estate developer, even as he continued to coordinate the import of thousands of kilograms of cocaine from South America to Europe, according to a 2022 indictment from Italy. 

“I was bragging about it to everyone, masquerading as an entrepreneur,” he told Italian prosecutors, referring to a deal in which he purchased an artificial island known as “Taiwan” for 13 million euros ($19 million). 

The island was part of a large archipelago shaped like the seven continents being constructed by a company owned by the Dubai government. 

 “This project was my business card,” Imperiale told prosecutors.

It was also a way to launder large amounts of money he was taking in from his drug trafficking, according to Italian authorities.

An Italian judge eventually seized Taiwan island, because it was suspected of having been purchased with the proceeds of drug trafficking. 

The judge said in the May 2024 seizure decree that the island’s value — between 30 and 50 million euros ($45 to $74 million) — was “enormously inferior to what was certainly the profit or product of the illegal activity for which he is prosecuted.”

Meanwhile, Imperiale had also become involved with two other Dubai firms, AA Investments and Development and AA Real Estate Development, the company the Sheik ended up with a stake in, which was set up in 2013. 

In 2015, on top of the Spanish charges, Imperiale was indicted for drug trafficking by a judge in the southern Italian city of Naples, where he was born. Italy followed up with an extradition request to the UAE in 2016, which also went unanswered.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have declined to comment on the case. 

Most Wanted 

Dubai has long had a reputation as a haven for high-profile alleged criminals like Daniel Kinahan of Ireland, and convicted ones such as Ridouan Taghi of the Netherlands, and Dutch-Bosnian Edin Gačanin. Imperiale, Taghi and Gačanin all reportedly attended Kinahan’s wedding in 2017 at Dubai’s Burj al Arab hotel.

Taghi has since been sent to the Netherlands and convicted, and a prosecution document from March shows he was appealing. Gačanin was convicted after a trial at a Dutch court, which he attended via videolink, but he has not been extradited. The UAE recently signed a treaty with Ireland, opening a path to Kinahan’s extradition.

Jodi Vittori, a professor at Georgetown University and expert on illicit finance, told OCCRP for its Dubai Unlocked project earlier this year that it was unclear why some extradition requests to the United Arab Emirates are met with cooperation and others are not. 

“In many ways, the UAE is a law-enforcement black hole,” she said.

Not only was Imperiale living openly in the emirati city-state, he was living lavishly. Italian court documents show that he spent 3.2 million euros (about $3.5 million) on “personal expenses” over the course of just three months in 2020. 

The drug trafficker remained on Italy’s most wanted list until he was finally arrested in Dubai in 2021 for passport fraud, and deported the following year. After his conviction, he became a witness for the Italian state, providing prosecutors with details about his drug business and associates. Imperiale is currently in prison serving a sentence of 15 years and eight months.

As for AA Real Estate Development, between 2012 and 2017 the company built five luxury villas on the tip of a leaf in Palm Jumeirah, a tree-shaped artificial island off Dubai’s coast. The villas — each with their own spa, infinity pool, and access to a private beach — were sold off for a total of almost 20 million euros ($25 million).

A year after the final villa was completed, in 2018, the prince exited the company. The firm's license expired four years later, in July 2022, four months after Imperiale was finally deported. There is no record of it ever having done any real estate development outside of the five villas it built on Palm Jumeirah.