- in United States
- within Antitrust/Competition Law, Intellectual Property and Privacy topic(s)
Journée de droit pénal économique 2026 - 25
ans de lutte contre le blanchiment d'argent
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.
Journée du droit pénal économique 2026 : 25 ans de lutte contre le blanchiment d'argent
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