{"id":18526,"date":"2022-02-02T03:28:28","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T03:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/?p=18526"},"modified":"2022-02-02T03:28:28","modified_gmt":"2022-02-02T03:28:28","slug":"largest-legal-unregulated-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/?p=18526","title":{"rendered":"largest legal unregulated industry…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In the course of our months of Pandora Papers reporting, one secretive industry kept popping up again and again. From politicians to power couples to alleged criminals, a particular kind of asset emerged as a go-to for the rich and powerful to store wealth: ARTWORK<\/a>.

For longtime ICIJ readers, this may not come as a surprise. Investigations like the Panama Papers and FinCEN Files showed how anonymously trading expensive art and antiquities \u2014 which are portable, increase in value over time, and can be bought with little anti-money laundering oversight \u2014 has become a widespread phenomenon.

But one surprise for ICIJ reporter Scilla Alecci was finding a number of pieces by street artist Banksy in the Pandora Papers<\/a> documents. Banksy\u2019s work rebukes consumer culture, capitalism, and the art world itself. But it has been swept up into a parallel financial system that many experts say represents the worst of what his art often critiques.

\u201cIt\u2019s terribly ironic,\u201d John Zarobell, a San Francisco University associate professor and author of \u201cArt and the Global Economy\u201d told ICIJ. \u201cWhen you become a famous artist, like Banksy has, your work gains lots of value, and then it can become a tool in these kinds of schemes by the ultra wealthy, in order to hide their wealth.\u201d

Scilla\u2019s latest investigation digs into London financial broker and former car racer Maurizio Fabris, who used an offshore trust to buy more than a dozen Banksy pieces \u2014 and sold some off to a London gallery managed by Banksy\u2019s former agent when he came under criminal investigation for alleged tax fraud in Italy.

The pieces were among more than 1,600 works of art by about 400 artists from all over the world that ICIJ identified in the Pandora Papers. These offshore dealings are emblematic of how the booming ART MARKET has become \u201cthe largest, legal unregulated industry,\u201d<\/a> in the words of American lawmakers, where dealers largely aren\u2019t subject to know-your-customer rules meant to stop suspicious transactions and financial crime \u2014 and reforms have been uneven and slow coming.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Court Painter has heard of the art market and is anxious to join.<\/p> <\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

View this email in your browser In the course of our months of Pandora Papers reporting, one secretive industry kept popping up again and again. From politicians to power couples to alleged criminals, a particular kind of asset emerged as a go-to for the rich and powerful to store wealth: ARTWORK. For longtime ICIJ readers, this … Continue reading “largest legal unregulated industry…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-images","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18526"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18537,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18526\/revisions\/18537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}