TRADECRAFT 101 PART FIVE: MONEY LAUNDERING THROUGH FINE ART AND ANTIQUES

Money launderers are known for being reactive and responsive to challenges they face. As unobstructed money movement on one industry becomes difficult or dangerous, they jump to another not so regulated or transparent. When things at the banks got too hot, they moves to the non-bank financial institutions. When those became highly regulated, they transferred their illicit activities to publicly-traded corporations and small businesses, in industries not connected to finance. Think of innovation and adaptability, and you have laundrymen. You can count the number of law enforcement agents who have fine art educations, and are tasked with tracing sales by enterprising laundrymen on the fingers of one hand, so it all gets past the gatekeepers and regulators.

For several years, laundrymen have thrown Old Masters painting in the boot (trunk) of dirty Volvos, and had their staff drive them to European or Middle Eastern jurisdictions where the fine art could be sold, and either laundered in the process, or submerged in the underground art world forever, to sit quietly in a study of an affluent individual who would conceal it indefinitely.

Alternatively, that multi-million dollar aset would be removed from its beautiful frame only to be laced in a cheap plastic one, and placed amongst dozens of inexpensive prints of famous paintings, shipped to another part of the world, where a dirty art dealer would vend it, disguising the sale proceeds as perhaps something entirely different, legitimizing the money in the process.

Of course, nowadays, with the advent of regulations ( UK, US etc.) designed to interdict fine art money laundering, it has become harder, and much of it now goes to totally unregulated jurisdictions in the developing world, where the greed of art dealers who do business in cash anyway, and who don't cae who they buy or sell to, is much easier.

Nevertheless, as laundrymen adapt to an increasingly regulatory world, they also change horses in midstream. Many of those who focused on money laundering through fine art now have shifted to high-end antiques, which reside in loopholes in some countries, and which:

(1) Don't have titles and names of authors, making identification far more difficult. They are not potentially stolen art from World War Two, to worry about. Their lack of unique status is their strength to laundrymen.

(2) Are really not easily appraised, meaning that a million dollar piece of furniture can sit unnoticed anywhere, or be transported with normal items in a moving van, or shipped on a cargo aircraft anywhere without being either recognized nor properly identified.

(3) will have ready willing and able purchasers, who only want the pieces to own them forever, in their private estate or collection, to pass down to their heirs, or quietly to museums after their death.

(4) Antique furniture doesn't require Provenance, information on prior owners similar to chain of title in real estate that fine art buyers insist upon.

As you can see, using these items of extremely valuable personal property to transfer illicit wealth, and to launder the money used to purchase it, is generally a successful activity, and that is why it remains so popular amongst laundrymen. Do you have art dealers in your bank client base, and do you monitor their high-end activity, we wonder?