Treasury Urges Closer Watch on Money Laundering in Fine Art

Fine art isn’t just nice to look at — it’s also attractive to criminals trying to launder money, finance terrorism and trade illegal drugs and arms. And the Treasury Department wants art dealers and financiers to do something about that.

The agency issued a 40-page report Friday recommending that financial firms and art dealers set up an information-sharing database to track how sales of fine art are linked to bad actors who make anonymous purchases.

The need to monitor art sales has become more complicated and necessary with the recent rise in sales of digital assets known as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.

Michael Greenwald, a former Treasury official and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, called the report “a critical first step for there to be a regulatory structure around the broader art market,” which he called one of the last unregulated markets.

Read the entire story and more from The Associated Press.