Vụ án trừng phạt Hezbollah nêu bật những lỗ hổng trong thị trường nghệ thuật

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Earlier this year, a Lebanese art collector (nhà sưu tầm nghệ thuật) was accused of money laundering (rửa tiền) and violating terrorism-related sanctions (biện pháp trừng phạt liên quan đến khủng bố) in a federal indictment (bản cáo trạng liên bang) that focused attention on the reported beneficiary (người thụ hưởng) of some of his activities: the militant group Hezbollah.

The collector, Nazem Ahmad, had been identified by U.S. authorities as a top financier of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based group that the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization. The indictment, in April, charged Mr. Ahmad with evading U.S. sanctions imposed on him in 2019, by using a network of businesses to conceal (che giấu) millions of dollars in transactions involving art and diamonds. Eight others were also charged.

...more than a year after Mr. Ahmad had been identified as a financial resource (nguồn tài chính) for Hezbollah, and business with him or entities he controlled had been banned, a New York artist agreed, apparently unwittingly, to sell him artwork, The government said Mr. Ahmad asked the artist, who was not named in the indictment, not to mention his name to the artist’s gallery because he preferred to remain anonymous (giấu tên). In 2021, the gallery, also unnamed, sold six of that artist’s works to a “Sierra Leone-based entity” described by investigators as a front for Mr. Ahmad,

...an unnamed Chicago gallery sold 21 works to a company that Mr. Ahmad had long used to buy art. The March 2022 sale came more than two years after the sanctions were imposed prohibiting him from such transactions. The shipment to a company in Lebanon was identified as containing “wooden baby cribs,” (nôi trẻ em bằng gỗ) not works of art, the legal documents said.