By Rosy Callisto
We are all familiar with the action of money laundering, which is basically an attempt to conceal the real origin of illegally obtained money by making it look like they were generated from legitimate business transactions. However, would you ever think that the extend of such actions would expand all the way into the art market? You might be thinking “how could all of this have happened right under our noses without anyone realizing?”. Well, there are plenty of reasons. Firstly, nowadays art is traded like a commodity. Everyone, especially the higher elite, are buying artworks not out of pure enjoyment of its beauty but rather for resale. Secondly, there are no strict regulations, the prices can be manipulated or boosted, and it can easily be transported across borders. Moreover, there has been an intense debate about anonymity in the art world over the past years. Even auction houses themselves do not always know whose art they are selling because the whole transactions are very private. In this industry, revealing such information would be seen as invasion of privacy. The fact that the parties involved remain anonymous makes it impossible to track the ownership of different artworks. Adding to that, the auction houses have become prey of the black hole of capitalism and are driven by financial interests, focusing only on getting worthy artworks that have the potential to attract as many customers as possible.
It is true that artworks are not a liquid asset and it may take some time until you cash out, but it is one of the safest ways of getting your money cleaned. Some of the practices could be by buying the artworks with the dirty money and then you could either use them as a collateral to get a bank loan or action the art you bought from the artists through the help of an action house. Other ways of laundering money are going under intense inspection, which has led criminals to come up with creative ways to get undetected for their illegal transactions.
One famous example is that of Edemar Cid Ferreira, an economist who was imprisoned in 2006 for money laundering. He managed to sneak in more than $30 million of art out of Brazil. For example, he transported Jean Michel Basquiat’s Hannibal to New York by initially listing its value as $100 to eliminate the need for customs documents, and later sold it for $5 million.
It is indeed devastating to see something as astonishing as art to be misused as a vehicle for unlawful actions by the rich or as a profit-generating mechanism. The question that remains is, how will these events unfold in the future? Will art continue to function as a vehicle for wrong intentions and for monetary reasons, or will the public become more woke and start appreciating it for the spiritual expression and beauty that it serves? Only time will tell.
Making sense of art and design industries 