Sheikh Mohamed bin Issa Al Jaber, a Saudi businessman whose fortune was once estimated at £5.3 billion before his business empire collapsed in 2013, is facing the loss of the north London house he and his wife have lived in for 34 years.

In March a High Court judge, Joanna Valentine, dismissed the couple’s attempt to shield the £8.3 million property in Hampstead Garden Suburb, near The Bishops Avenue, from creditors pursuing roughly £80 million. The case is a useful illustration of two things at once: how far an offshore insolvency can travel, and how English courts handle claims that religious or cultural custom determines who owns a house.

How a Caribbean liquidation reached Hampstead

The chain starts with MBI International & Partners Inc, a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in July 1990 and named after the sheikh’s own name. A BVI court ordered it wound up in October 2011.

That would ordinarily be the end of the English story. It was not, because in June 2017 the English High Court recognised the BVI liquidation under the Cross-Border Insolvency Regulations 2006. Recognition is the mechanism that lets a foreign insolvency reach assets held in England, and it is what eventually put a London house within reach of the company’s liquidators.

The underlying dispute concerned 891,761 shares the company held in another of the sheikh’s companies, JJW Hotels & Resorts Holding Inc. Around February 2016 — after his powers as a director had ended, and without the knowledge of the company’s liquidator — Al Jaber signed two undated share transfer forms moving those shares to a Guernsey company he also directed, purporting to sign on the company’s behalf as its director. In July 2017 all of the assets and liabilities of the underlying company were transferred onward to a UK entity, which left the shares worthless.

The €67 million question

The liquidators sued in May 2019. The trial judge found that the sheikh had dishonestly caused the transfer in breach of his fiduciary duties, that the Guernsey company was liable in knowing receipt, and ordered the two of them jointly to pay €67.1 million in equitable compensation — the estimated value of the shares in 2016, before they lost their worth.

The Court of Appeal agreed that he had breached his duties but overturned the money order, reasoning that since the shares had become worthless the company had suffered no loss. In November 2025 the UK Supreme Court disagreed and restored the original award, in Mitchell and another v Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber [2025] UKSC 43. A 2023 High Court judgment had already established his liability to the liquidators, and the sum owed has since grown to around £80 million.

The argument about the house

Creditors sought to secure part of that debt by placing a charge against the Hampstead property. The sheikh and his wife, Makiyah al-Jaber, argued that they could not, because the house was not really his to charge.

Their first argument was religious. They contended that Muslim custom requires a husband to provide a home for his wife, and that such a property then becomes hers. On that reading, the house had been held on trust for her from the moment it was bought.

Their second argument was a standard piece of English property law. Mrs Jaber said a common intention constructive trust had arisen through her substantial contribution to improving the property — she had run the household and supervised extensive renovations across three decades — and that she was therefore its beneficial owner.

Why it failed

The judge rejected both. The property is registered in the sheikh’s name alone, and English law starts from the register. A general custom that husbands provide homes for their wives is not, in itself, evidence that a particular house was held on trust for a particular person: English courts look for an intention about that property, expressed or inferred from conduct, not for a rule imported from elsewhere.

The constructive trust argument fails on a related point. Household management and supervising renovations are, on the established case law, generally treated as what spouses do rather than as evidence of a shared intention to change who owns the property. That threshold is a long-standing subject of criticism from family lawyers, who argue it undervalues unpaid domestic work — but it is the law the judge was applying.

What the ruling does not do is order anyone out of the house. It clears the way for creditors to secure the debt against it, which is a different and slower thing.

Sources

UK Supreme Court, Mitchell and another (Joint Liquidators of MBI International & Partners Inc) v Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber [2025] UKSC 43 and the court’s own case summary; GB News; KRyS Global.