- within Antitrust/Competition Law, Intellectual Property and Privacy topic(s)
Université de Lausanne, CEDIDAC, Journée de droit pénal de l'entreprise
Criminals increasingly exploit the art market's opacity to launder funds, leveraging portable assets with subjective pricing, confidential intermediaries, and cross‑border private sales that obscure audit trails—often aided by freeports. Techniques include misinvoicing, shell and trust structures, third‑party payments, rapid flips to fabricate price validation, manipulated provenance, and use of auction exemptions or private treaty sales to limit disclosure, with digital channels enabling peer‑to‑peer transfers and tokenized fractional ownership. Regulators are extending financial‑sector standards—customer due diligence, beneficial ownership checks, sanctions screening, and suspicious activity reporting—to dealers, galleries, auction houses, and, in some places, freeports and antiquities traders. Effective programs center on risk‑based onboarding, robust source‑of‑funds and source‑of‑wealth reviews for high‑risk or politically exposed buyers, contractual warranties and audit rights, strict payment controls that bar unknown third‑party funds and require traceable banking, and monitoring tuned to red flags such as abrupt price spikes, complex ownership, and unnecessary cross‑border routing. Strengthened provenance verification—using independent experts, digital registries, and tamper‑evident records—further reduces manipulation. Ultimately, aligning art‑market practices with financial‑grade AML expectations demands a culture of transparency, consistent record‑keeping, and clear escalation so suspicious behavior is documented and reported, not normalized.
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