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A Regent’s Park mansion once owned by Saudi royals that fell into receivership nearly two years ago has been sold for £139 million to a mystery buyer in one of London’s biggest property sales.

Holme, which sits in a four-acre private garden within Regent’s Park in central London, is being sold by a UK subsidiary of Zedra, a corporate services and wealth management company that runs the trust for to various clients, according to UK land records.

The £138.9mn sale rivals billionaire Adar Poonawalla’s nearly £138mn purchase of Aberconway House in Mayfair in 2023 as the second most expensive house ever sold in London.

“It’s a once in a decade kind of thing PROPERTY . . . a mini beautiful house in the middle of London, in its own park,” said Roarie Scarisbrick, a buying agent at Property Vision. “This is not a home for the shy and retiring type.”

UK companies must publicly register their beneficial owners. This requirement is extended to overseas companies that own property in UKto increase transparency after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

But it’s still there gaps in the regime which drew criticism from transparency advocates and some lawmakers. The individuals behind certain assets can still be anonymous through trusts, where information about the largest beneficiaries is disclosed to the government but not made public.

Proposing transparency measures by 2023, former housing secretary Michael Gove said: “Trusts can be used for perfectly legitimate reasons. But they can, and do, have deliberately labyrinthine structures to will not identify the ownership of assets and facilitate the movement of corrupt individuals.

The company registered as Holme’s new owner is controlled by a Luxembourg-based Zedra entity, according to corporate records.

The UK government has published new draft regulations that will allow anyone to apply for information about trusts held in the register of property owners overseas – with certain exceptions limits, for example, to protect information about minors. If approved, the regulations are expected to take effect in August.

The Holme came to the marketin early 2023 looking for a price as high as £250 million after the mortgages secured against the property expire. It was previously bought in the name of Prince Khaled bin Sultan al-Saud of Saudi Arabia and his family in 1991 through a Guernsey-registered company called Quendon Ltd, which later listed five of Prince Khaled’s children as beneficial owners.

The 207-year-old villa, which is owned on a long lease from the Crown Estate, may require complex and expensive renovations due to its heritage status, people familiar with the property said. One of the few private residences located within a central London park, Holme’s neighbors include the US ambassador’s residence at Winfield House.

Public records show the property was sold in mid-December to Trinity Investments, an Irish company managed by London-based hedge fund Attestor. The fund is known for its debt strategies, and made a multimillion-pound loan to Quendon’s property acquisition.

Attestor and Zedra declined to comment. Agents Knight Frank and Beauchamp Estates, appointed to sell the house, declined to comment.

The most expensive house sale in London, the 45-room mansion at 2-8a Rutland Gate, was secretly approved before the Covid-19 pandemic and involved a company in the British Virgin Islands that bought the property in £ 210 million from an entity registered in Curaçao. The Financial Times revealed in 2022 that the buyer was Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan, once China’s richest man.