This week, we're replaying some of our favorite Forbes stories from 2024.

Today on Forbes, Dubai Unlocked, inside the secret billionaire hideaways.

In December 2023, Binance founder Changpang Zhao, who was also known as C.Z, asked the judge in his money laundering case

in the U.S. District Court of Seattle if he could return to his home in Dubai while awaiting

sentencing. The request was rejected, but when Zhao concludes his four-month prison sentence

later this year, the crypto-mogal is likely to return to the Middle Eastern Emirate.

While it was well known that

CZ owned an apartment in Dubai, the details have been kept under wraps until now. Through

corporate filings for Binance subsidiaries in Ireland, Forbes had previously linked Zhao to a 429

square foot studio apartment in a 23-story building on the dusty edges of Dubai, an unlikely home

for a tycoon worth $33 billion. However, more recently, Forbes dug into dozens of property

records in Dubai and matched them with information from corporate filings for Binance entities

in Malta. That ultimately uncovered Zhao's actual Dubai home, an 11,600-square-foot six-bedroom

apartment in the 118, a luxury residential tower in the heart of downtown, which he purchased

for $13.5 million in October 2021.

Zhao isn't the only billionaire whose recent purchases of Dubai real estate, Forbes, is investigated.

In 2022, Mukeshambani, Asia's richest person, spent a combined $238 million on two villas on

Palm Jumera, an exclusive palm tree-shaped archipelago of artificial islands.

Both purchases broke the record for the most expensive home sale in Dubai. Documents seen by Forbes revealed a staggering size of

the properties for the first time. Ambani bought the first, a 27,544 square foot villa in March

2022.

He then bought a 59,570-square-foot home down the road seven months later.

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