Corruption and influence peddling… darn that criminal behavior by a guy whose private jet seemed to show up when 45* did, as well as overpaying for art and mansions…
The fertilizer king has a $2 billion beef with a guy reminding us why a record amount of money ($450 million) was paid by a Saudi for a da Vinci painting.
Senator Whitehouse reminds us there’s going to be rich, investigative soil for tilling in the next Congress.
Police in Monaco have detained Russian tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlev for questioning as part of an investigation into corruption and influence peddling, according to reports.
Rybolovlev, who owns the football club AS Monaco, was held on Tuesday and police also searched his luxury residence in Monaco, Le Monde newspaper said.
A judge in the principality has been investigating whether Rybolovlev sought to influence law enforcement officials in his long-running dispute with Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier.
The Russian alleges Bouvier swindled him out of $1bn by overcharging him on 38 pieces of art he purchased over a 10-year period and is suing his former art adviser in Monaco, Singapore and Switzerland. Bouvier has denied wrongdoing.
www.theguardian.com/...
“Laundering money through art, if you're into that sort of thing. The art market is virtually unregulated — prices are flexible, deals are made in secrecy, and "private collectors" remain anonymous — making it exceptionally ripe for money laundering.”
Secrecy has long been central to the art world. Anonymity protects privacy, adds mystique and cuts the taint of crass commerce from such transactions. But some experts are now saying this sort of discretion — one founded in a simpler time, when only a few wealthy collectors took part in the art market — is not only quaint but also reckless when art is traded like a commodity and increasingly suspected in money laundering.
“The art market is an ideal playing ground for money laundering,” said Thomas Christ, a board member of the Basel Institute on Governance, a Swiss nonprofit that has studied the issue. “We have to ask for clear transparency, where you got the money from and where it is going.”
www.nytimes.com/...
The art market is notoriously opaque and unregulated, which makes it particularly vulnerable to this kind of nefarious activity. Dirty money, disguised as capital gains on the sale of sale of one or more assets, is laundered by undervaluing art at purchase or overvaluing it at sale, making it difficult for financial institutions or law enforcement to find out. Transferring the value of the criminal proceeds is then implemented by simply transferring ownership of the asset.
International standards promulgated by the Financial Action Task Force have been adopted as domestic law by nearly every country of the world, with banks, broker-dealers, payment agencies and other businesses subject to required preventative measures to prevent and uncover money laundering.
law.case.edu/...