The US art market is a sanctions black hole

It currently provides an untraceable funding source for blacklisted individuals and entities

By Deborah Lehr as featured on Financial Times

On February 23, a day before the second anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine and a week after the suspected murder of Alexei Navalny, President Joe Biden imposed over 500 new sanctions targeting “Russia’s war machine”. Unfortunately, this strengthened sanctions regime is undermined by a major oversight: the exemption of the American art market, worth more than $30bn, from standard laws and regulations. This continues to give our adversaries an easy back door into the US, and with it the world’s largest economy.