A comprehensive set of services facilitating the purchase, sale, exchange, and auction of artwork, antiquities, and historically significant items. These services, typically offered by specialized auction houses, galleries, and dealers, often include provenance research, authentication, private transactions, and organized auctions for collectors, museums, dealers, and investors.
Main/
Art and Antiquities Trading & Auction Services
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Code
PS0019
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Name
Art and Antiquities Trading & Auction Services
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Version
1.0
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Category
E-commerce, Marketplaces & Retail
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Created
2025-03-14
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Modified
2025-04-02
Related Techniques
- Criminals exploit the subjective prices and private nature of art and antiquities transactions, purchasing or selling high-value pieces under manipulated valuations to hide illicit funds.
- Falsified provenance or authenticity documents further obscure the items’ history, complicating authorities’ attempts to trace ownership.
- Private or closed-door auctions enable secretive buy-sell cycles that facilitate layering, making it harder to identify ultimate beneficiaries.
- Criminals can list or privately offer looted antiquities with falsified provenance, obscuring their illicit origin.
- Discretionary pricing and subjective valuation allow over- or under-invoicing, providing opportunities for layering.
- Repeated resale through auctions or private deals changes ownership records multiple times, making it harder to trace illicit proceeds.
- Offenders fabricate provenance or falsify valuations of art and antiquities, inflating or deflating prices to absorb illicit proceeds or minimize visible wealth.
- The subsequent resale of these assets at a newly manipulated price gives the appearance of legitimate profit or loss, masking the true origin of funds.
- High-value or antique jewelry can be sold via auction houses where subjective appraisals permit significant price manipulation.
- Repeat sales with altered valuations create layers of transactions, muddling ownership and audit trails.
- Criminals leverage the auctioning of high-value collectibles (e.g., rare coins, stamps, or memorabilia) under the broader umbrella of art or antiquities to introduce illicit funds.
- Subjective valuations enable them to justify artificially inflated or deflated prices, creating complex layering chains.
- Limited provenance checks and oversight at certain auction houses allow repeated buy-and-sell transactions to mask ownership and fund origin.
- Criminals exploit private auctions and subjective valuations to buy and sell artwork at manipulated prices, obscuring the origin of illicit funds.
- Limited transparency regarding buyer or seller identity allows shell entities or nominees to conceal beneficial ownership.
- Acceptance of cash or in-kind payments in some deals further complicates AML monitoring, enabling criminals to transform illicit funds into seemingly legitimate sales proceeds.
- High-value art sales and purchases allow large sums of corrupt money to be obscured as investment in collectible assets.
- Limited transparency in art transactions creates an ideal environment for laundering, where beneficial ownership and exact sale prices are often undisclosed.
- Criminals can present NFTs as digital artwork and exploit auction mechanisms to stage sales at artificially exaggerated prices, masking illicit funds as legitimate art proceeds.
- Limited provenance checks or verification processes enable wash trading and inflated valuations, obscuring the true origins of the funds.
- By portraying profits from NFT transactions as legitimate art sales, criminals can more easily integrate illicit proceeds into the financial system.
- Criminals may deposit illicit funds under the guise of bidding on high-value artwork or antiquities and later request partial or full refunds, creating a veneer of legitimate transactions.
- They can artificially inflate or deflate final sale prices through collusive bidding, generating receipts for seemingly lawful proceeds while obscuring true ownership and fund origins.
- Limited transparency around private or sealed bids and inconsistent AML checks within some art auction practices make it difficult to verify beneficial owners or trace suspicious funds.