Why do people buy huge canvases with a few dots on from an arts unheard of for millions? I know it’s commonly used to launder money. Can someone explain how the process works?
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You don’t really “launder” money with art. You exchange art + dirty for clean money and the laundering is done afterwards.
The buyer of the art is the launderer. He has legitimate 10m in the bank.
You have drug money in 12m cash. You need clean money to spend because you can’t deposit 12m in the bank and you can’t spend the 12m in cash in any way to satisfy your drug lord lifestyle. You can’t buy property, (expensive) cars, boats, etc.
You go to the launderer and sell him an art for 10m. The launderer gives you a bill of sale and make it official. Under the table, you hand him 12m in bags of cash (he keeps 2m for his efforts).
You now have 10m legal, traced money to spend on whatever you like. You are out of the equation now.
Now, the launderer take the 12m cash and launder it into clean money. He can do many different tricks like casino, car wash, restaurant, etc. For example, he buys a car wash (with legitimate money) for 500k. Then he magically makes 5x of the previous owner but it’s cash payments with receipt. Of course there’s no actual cars being washed but on paper, cars are coming in and out and paying in cash. Now he has clean legal money from his legitimate car wash business. Now he can do it all again for another drug lord.
Edit: didn’t really talk about art but that’s the topic. Art is used because it has no defined value. One piece of art is worth $10 and 10m at the same time depending on the buyer. Therefore, the launderer selling an art for 10m isn’t out of ordinary.
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