Money Laundering Through Art

​The art world has been discovered by criminals as an effective way for money laundering and other clandestine activities on an international level. Unfortunately, in most countries investigators, prosecutors, judges, and regulatory agencies are not equipped to accurately detect, investigate and prosecute this type of criminal activity. Also, regulation and international laws and treaties involving the art world have many loopholes that can potentially lead to the laundering of large sums of money. This book provides a bird’s eye view of novel ways in which money laundering happens through illegal activities involving art. It can serve as a guide for law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and others involved in efforts to curb money laundering and financing of terrorism, revealing why somehow new techniques used by criminals have been neglected by law enforcement in most countries. Drawing from his own experience with the matter in both Brazil and in the United States, the author makes a case for broader institutional and regulatory improvement, extending beyond mere regulation of the art market.

A thrilling, eye-popping look at true crime in the billion-dollar art world. The art world is one of the most secretive of global businesses, and the list of its crimes runs long and deep. Today, with prices in the hundreds of millions for individual artworks, and billionaires' collections among the most conspicuous and liquid of their assets, crime is more rampant than ever in this largely unregulated universe. Increased prices and globalization have introduced new levels of fraud and malfeasance into the art world--everything from "artnapping," in which an artwork is held hostage and only returned for a ransom, to forgery and tax fraud. However, the extent of the economic and cultural damage that results from criminality in the global art scene rarely comes to light. The stories of high-stakes, brazen art crimes told by art experts Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm are by turns thrilling, disturbing, and unbelievable (the imagination for using art to commit crimes seems boundless). The authors also provide a well-founded analysis of what needs to change in the art market and at museums. From the authors of False Pictures, Real Money (about the Beltracchi art forgery case), Art and Crime includes a chapter on art owned by Donald Trump. It is a thoroughly researched, explosive, and highly topical book that uncovers the extraordinary and multifarious thefts of art and cultural objects around the world.

Money laundering is one of the main 'engines of crime' sustaining global criminal enterprises and is worth billions of dollars. The increasingly global and virtual nature of financial services and the emergence of technology-enabled products, such as crypto currencies and anonymization tools, have made the task of combating it more difficult.To complicate things, controlling much of this mega-illicit activity are global money laundering syndicates, who offer their services to criminal networks, and are highly adept at exploiting gaps in the financial systems. Another complication to the compliance function is the complex legal requirements set by each country to limit the international flows of illicit funds. These are the challenging conditions within which anti-money laundering (AML) and Counter Terrorism Financing (CTF) measures currently operate.Money laundering takes place in all forms and shapes. There are no social, economic, geographic, or professional boundaries immune from abuse which can facilitate money laundering. Artwork, antiquities, antiques, precious stones, and exotic cars are among a few of the items frequently used. This book will explore elements of money laundering that touch all these areas.To understand money laundering, one must understand the history of money laundering and the evolution of the inclusion of priceless items as a means of laundering illegitimate and elicit funds. This guide is an essential tool to learn, understand, expand, and maintain a proper understanding of money laundering flows and how to prepare the financial industry for evolving risks.I grew up in Miami in the 80's and early 90's, a time when money laundering and drug trafficking through the city reached its peak. In fact, my banking career started at the height of the Cocaine Cowboy era in the mid-80's. At this time financial regulations were still in their infancy and technology to manage the detection and monitoring of white-collar financial crimes by financial institutions did not yet exist. I started off as a part time teller at a large Miami Beach bank while still in high school. This experience provided me with my first exposure to how billions of dollars in cash was making its way into banks across the city. I often refer to Miami as ground zero for money laundering, as well as for my education on the subject. I grew professionally inside Miami banks by securing positions in audit departments where I developed firsthand knowledge of the various facets of banking. In the early 90s I continued to grow professionally, shifting my focus towards the growing realm of financial technology. At the time, cutting edge technology consisted of personal computers which were still in their early stages of development, and there was a sharp learning curve for myself and my colleagues trying to understand how to use shared desktop terminals and PC's for the first time. My experience with technology within the financial sphere expanded in the late 90's and 2000's when I grew to develop a greater understanding of the role of software and how certain programs could be used in combination with advancing technology - that is, newer, faster desktop computers and laptops - to facilitate the implementation of infrastructure within institutions that could be used to both enhance operational efficiency, as well as create processes that could be utilized to ensure that institutions could comply with new and evolving regulatory requirements. The bulk of these regulations would come to be encompassed within the USA PATRIOT Act.

Understanding the art fraud battle that waged between Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev and Swiss art magnate Yves Bouvier

"Money laundering is a problem of some magnitude internationally and has long term negative economic impacts. Brigitte Unger argues that today, money laundering is largely linked to fraud and that it is not only small islands and tax heavens that launder, but increasingly industrialized countries like the US, Australia the Netherlands and the UK. Well-established financial markets and growing economies with sound political and social structures attract launderers in the same way as they attract honest capital. The book gives an interdisciplinary overview of the state-of-the-art of money laundering as well as describing the legal problems of defining and fighting money laundering. It then goes on to present a number of economic models designed to measure money laundering and applies these to measuring the size of laundering in the Netherlands and Australia. The book also gives an overview of techniques and potential effects of money laundering identified and measured so far in the literature. It adds to this debate by calculating the effects of laundering on crime and economic growth. This book will be of great interest to lawyers, financial experts, economists, political scientists, as well as to government ministries, international and national organizations and central banks."--Jacket.

In this fully revised and updated second edition of Art Law and the Business of Art, Martin Wilson, an art lawyer with more than 20 years’ experience in the field, provides a comprehensive and practical guide to the application of UK law to transactions and disputes in the art world. New to this Edition: • Thoroughly revised guidance on new anti-money laundering requirements • Updated discussion in the context of Brexit and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic • New coverage of the emerging issues such as the treatment of NFTs and the increased use of internet auctions

Through the use of case examples and careful examination, this book presents the first interdisciplinary essay collection on the study of art crime, and its effect on all aspects of the art world. Contributors discuss art crime subcategories, including vandalism, iconoclasm, forgery, fraud, peace-time theft, war looting, archaeological looting, smuggling, submarine looting, and ransom. The contributors offer insightful analyses coupled with specific practical suggestions to implement in the future to prevent and address art crime. This work is of critical importance to anyone involved in the art world, its trade, study, and security. Art crime has received relatively little attention from those who study art to those who prosecute crimes. Indeed, the general public is not well-aware of the various forms of art crime and its impact on society at large, to say nothing of museums, history, and cultural affairs. And yet it involves a multi-billion dollar legitimate industry, with a conservatively-estimated $6 billion annual criminal profit. Information about and analysis of art crime is critical to the wide variety of fields involved in the art trade and art preservation, from museums to academia, from auction houses to galleries, from insurance to art law, from policing to security. Since the Second World War, art crime has evolved from a relatively innocuous crime, into the third highest-grossing annual criminal trade worldwide, run primarily by organized crime syndicates, and therefore funding their other enterprises, from the drug and arms trades to terrorism. It is no longer merely the art that is at stake.

"This book lifts the lid on some of the excesses that the 21st-century explosion of the contemporary art market brought in its wake, notably at its very top end. The buying of art as an investment, temptations to forgery, tax evasion, money laundering and pressure to produce more and more art all form part of this story, as do issues over authentication and the impact of the enhanced use of financial instruments on art transactions. Drawing on a series of revealing interviews with artists, lawyers, dealers, law-enforcement agents, tax specialists and collectors, the author charts the voracious commodification of artists and art objects, and art's position in the clandestine puzzle of the highest echelons of global capital. Adam's revelations appear even timelier in the wake of the Panama Papers disclosures, for example incorporating examples of the way tax havens have been used to stash art transactions - and ownership - away from public scrutiny. Georgina Adam casts her judicious glance over a section of the art market whose controversies and intrigues will be of eye-opening interest to both art-world players and observers."--Publisher's description.