A company owned by Nur Muhammed Palvan, son of a Chinese-born Uyghur trade magnate accused of running a vast smuggling and money-laundering network across Central Asia, paid £2.6 million — roughly $3.2 million — for a former church in north London in 2023. The building, in the multicultural Palmers Green neighbourhood, has since been converted into the Satuq Bughra Khan Mosque and Uyghur Islamic Education Centre, and an event marking what was billed as the opening of the United Kingdom’s first Uyghur mosque was advertised on Instagram this January.
Palvan now chairs the board of trustees of Izqilar, the Uyghur charity that operates the centre. The purchase was made through a newly registered UK company, Palvan Ltd. The specific origin of the funds used is not established, but corporate and property registry documents obtained by OCCRP show that Palvan previously received more than $1.8 million through the financial network that investigators allege was used to launder proceeds from his father’s business empire — a connection that raises questions about whether any of those funds were applied to the mosque project.
A Family Under Scrutiny
Palvan’s father, Khabibula Abdukadyr, was the subject of a 2019 investigation by OCCRP, Kloop and RFE/RL that portrayed him as a powerful logistics magnate who colluded with corrupt officials to dominate the flow of Chinese imports into Central Asia through an alleged smuggling and money-laundering operation. Abdukadyr was never formally charged. The 2019 reporting drew on documents and testimony provided by a former employee who admitted to laundering hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of Abdukadyr and his extended family; that former employee was murdered in Istanbul shortly after speaking with journalists.
Those documents also showed that Palvan, while living in the UK under a different name — Aibibula Nuermaimaiti — held ownership of major companies and assets linked to his father’s operation, in addition to receiving the funds described above. A subsequent OCCRP investigation published in 2023 found that the family had expanded its real estate holdings across Central Asia, the Middle East and the UK. Palvan bought the Palmers Green church the same month that investigation appeared.
The 2019 inquiry also implicated a senior former Kyrgyz customs official who allegedly enabled the Abdukadyrs’ smuggling schemes and received laundered funds. After a popular uprising ended his bid for electoral power, he was prosecuted under Kyrgyzstan’s new government and pleaded guilty to corruption charges.
A Growing Property Portfolio
The London mosque is one piece of a considerably larger international portfolio. The Abdukadyr family’s other London holdings include a mansion purchased in 2015 for $6.8 million, on whose ownership documents Palvan also appears, as well as commercial and residential properties across Greater London, among them the site of a planned but still unbuilt hotel in Ealing acquired for more than $27 million.
Beyond the UK, reporters identified holdings in Dubai, Turkey and across Central Asia acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars in total. The portfolio includes two further religious institutions: a sprawling religious centre in Kazakhstan that cost $15 million, and a mosque in Bishkek.
A brochure issued by the Izqilar charity described plans to redecorate the former church’s main prayer area in what it called traditional Uyghur mosque style and to create a separate prayer area for women. Photos on the mosque’s website show a completed renovation. The centre now hosts daily prayers alongside religious education and Uyghur language classes.
There is no evidence that Izqilar staff were aware of the origins of the funds Palvan used to purchase or redevelop the property. When contacted by phone, a representative of the charity declined to answer questions, hung up when Palvan’s name was raised, and did not respond to subsequent emails. Palvan and his father did not respond to requests for comment.
