June 25, 2016
Criminals and corrupt officials seeking to launder millions of pounds of dirty money are targeting London’s largely unregulated art market, experts and campaigners have warned.
At a May anti-corruption summit in London hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron, countries from around the world agreed on a series of measures to stop illegal money being laundered through companies and the property market.
Martin Kenney, one of the world’s leading anti-money laundering lawyers, warned that as rules tighten to restrict the flow of dirty money, criminals would seek to exploit relatively unregulated markets like fine art, where illegal wealth can be preserved in art bought and stored anonymously.
“Money launderers and other ne’er-do-wells will increase the pace of their migration to ever more anonymous systems for concealing the origin of the money that they seek to wash and hide,” Kenney told IBTimes UK. Under current rules those bidding for art in London’s booming fine art auction houses are under no obligation to reveal their identity, and often bid through intermediaries. Multi-million dollar transactions are frequently filtered through a complex series of companies and offshore accounts.