UK court freezes assets of MFS owner Paresh Raja after $1.3bn collapse and fraud allegations

18 March 2026 , 18:24

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Businessman barred from spending more than £5,000 a week without administrators’ consent.

The administrators of UK mortgage provider Market Financial Solutions have secured a worldwide freezing order against the company’s owner Paresh Raja, after the lender collapsed amid allegations of fraud last month.

Under the order, Raja — who is currently in Dubai — must provide details of all his assets worth more than £10,000 and is prevented from spending more than £5,000 a week without the consent of MFS’s administrators, people familiar with the matter told the FT.

Courts in London and Dubai in recent days ratified the applications made by MFS’s administrators AlixPartners, the people said. Both orders have been served upon Raja, they added.

Creditors to MFS, who extended the company financing backed by short-term mortgages, are facing an alleged shortfall of £1.3bn following the group’s collapse last month, with about £250mn unaccounted for after discovering a network of borrowers seemingly tied to its owner.

Companies including Barclays, Jefferies and Apollo’s structured credit arm Atlas SP Partners are among those that extended more than £2bn of financing to MFS, which claimed it could “deliver loans as large as £50mn in as little as three days”.

Creditors are now scrambling to figure out what their collateral is actually worth amid allegations of double-pledging made in court.

MFS’s unravelling has reignited fears over underwriting standards in the market for asset-backed lending, following the dual collapse of US companies First Brands and Tricolor last year.

The collapse of the US companies, which now both face fraud investigations by the US Department of Justice, sent shockwaves through the global financial sector last year.

The twin failures prompted Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase chief executive, to warn that there may be more “cockroaches” whose bankruptcies could rattle markets.

The US failures also spurred financial institutions that lent to MFS to instigate extra checks in their loan books, including Barclays.

“We welcome the granting of these applications which follow two weeks of intense analysis and investigation into the operations and affairs of MFS and Paresh Raja,” AlixPartners said on Wednesday.

“This is an important and significant step in this very complex situation, and the support of the courts is critical as we continue our pursuit of the best possible outcome for all creditors of both MFS and its associated companies.”

A large part of MFS’s business involved backing dozens of property deals linked to Saifuzzaman Chowdhury, a former land minister in Bangladesh. Along with his family members, he built a sprawling $295mn property portfolio from 1992 until August 2024, when the government of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh collapsed amid student protests.

MFS-linked entities were listed as being involved in 291 of the 495 charges registered by the companies against properties in England and Wales, the FT reported last year.

The UK’s National Crime Agency froze 342 properties linked to Chowdhury, worth about £185mn, in June 2025 as part of “an ongoing civil investigation”.