Pizzagate Exposed Artist Jeff Koons as a Pedophile Involved in Money Laundering - His 'Rabbit' Sculpture Just Sold for a Record $91 Million to the Father of Treasury Secretary Mnuchin (pizzagate)

submitted 5.5 years ago by Oh_Well_ian

OVERVIEW: Art in Embassies Program Gave Podestas, Jeff Koons, Rockefellers, Clintons, Marina Abramovic, Rothschilds even Alefantis access to a private shipping channel that could bypass airport security credit: @Swordfish69

Jeff Koons ‘Rabbit’ Sets Auction Record for Most Expensive Work by Living Artist

Robert E. Mnuchin, an art dealer and the father of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, made the winning bid for Mr. Koons’s 1986 “Rabbit” from an aisle seat near the front of the salesroom. He was seated near Peter Brant, the collector and private museum-owner, and Jeffrey Deitch, the dealer.

It was the ultimate prize among six works offered at Christie’s from the collection of the magazine publisher S.I. Newhouse Jr., who died in 2017. Estimated to raise at least $50 million, this sculpture, made in an edition of three and one artist’s proof, was the last example left in private hands, according to Christie’s.

The price, surpassing the $90.2 million with fees achieved, again at Christie’s, for Mr. Hockney’s 1972 painting, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures),” confirmed how Mr. Koons’s metal sculptures have become the ultimate billionaire trophies produced during the contemporary art boom of the 1980s and ’90s. The Hockney milestone came at the expense of Mr. Koons, the previous record-holder, whose “Balloon Dog (Orange)” sold at auction for $58.4 million in November 2013.

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Blacksmith21 5.5 years ago

That is insane - American artists like O'Keefe, Klee, Pollack, etc. don't even command prices like that. This reeks of a money laundering operation.

What really throws me is Mnuchin being involved. But art is art, regardless of who or what created it. I love art, but the industry is filled with freaks and creeps.

Nice find.

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Are_we_sure 5.5 years ago

Explain your money laundering claim.

This reeks of a money laundering operation.

Exactly how? People keep repeating this without explaining how this works. How does putting a painting with a proven ownership history up for auction launder money. Who's money is being laundered? What makes it clean?

People are confusing the impulse I don't understand why some art is so expensive with the absolutely evidence-free claim of art is expensive only because of money laundering.

art prices

As for US artists, Pollack had piece go for $140 million, Edward Hopper had one go for $92 million. I suspect if there were more super rich women, Georgia O'Keefe prices would be up there. Alice Walton of Walmart wealth bought an O'Keefe for her museum for $44 million in 2014. Basquiat had one go for $110 million.

2019 is a more favorable time to sell art based on stock market and tax scenarios, so

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letsdothis3 5.5 years ago

Here, let me help you out:

The link between art and money laundering

The notoriously opaque and largely unregulated art market faces greater scrutiny as financial authorities discover it has become the ideal money-laundering tool, an art conference in London heard on Thursday.

One of the presenters at the Art Business Conference, Michael Martin, head of the forensic and anti money-laundering services at Deloitte Luxembourg, said "art is one of the asset classes that obviously lends itself to money laundering."

He noted that European financial regulators are starting to clamp down on the art market to make it transparent and reduce its appeal to money launderers. In June, Stiliano Ordilli, head of the Swiss Money Laundering Reporting Office, said "there must be a real regulation of the art market, if only to protect the honest traders."

Mr. Martin said that "if he [Mr. Ordilli] calls for it, he has to have concerns" that using art sales for money laundering – concealing the source of illegally obtained money – is a big business.

There are no accepted estimates on the amounts of money laundered through the art market, although the general belief is that it is enormous and expanding as regulations on other asset classes, from real estate to foreign exchange, tighten up everywhere. The International Monetary Fund estimated that "the amount available for laundering through the financial system" was worth 2.7 per cent of global gross domestic product in 2009 or $1.6-trillion (U.S.).

The relative ease of laundering illicit funds through art dealers and auction houses is thought to have contributed to the spectacular rise in the value of fine art in recent years.

Some high-profile economists, including Nouriel Roubini of New York University's Stern School, have been making pleas for greater regulation of the global art market, which was worth €51-billion ($75-billion) in 2014, according to this year's Art Market Report, published by the European Fine Art Fair.

At the World Economic Forum in January in Davos, Mr. Roubini, himself an art collector, said: "Whether we like it or not, art is used for tax avoidance and evasion. It can be used for money laundering. You can buy something for half a million, not show a passport, and ship it. Plenty of people are using it for laundering."

Speaking on the sidelines of the Art Business Conference, Pierre Valentin, head of the art law practice at London law firm Constantine Cannon, said laundering illicit funds through the art market was seductive because purchases at auctions "can be anonymous and it's a moveable asset. You can put the art on a private plane and take it anywhere. Plus there is no registration system for art."

Once purchased, the art can disappear from view for years, even decades. A lot of the art bought at auctions goes to freeports – ultra-secure warehouses for the collections of millionaires and billionaires, ranging from Picassos and gold to vintage Ferraris and fine wine. The freeports, which exist in Switzerland, Luxembourg and Singapore, offer a variety of tax advantages because the goods stored in them are technically in transit. The Economist magazine reported that the freeport near the Geneva airport alone is thought to hold $100-billion (U.S.) of art.

Once inside the freeport, the art can be sold privately and anonymously to other buyers. The art need never leave the warehouse after the private sale is completed.

In February, Swiss businessman and Singapore resident Yves Bouvier, known as the "king of the freeports," was arrested in Monaco on suspicion of manipulating art prices and money laundering. His company, Natural Le Coultre, specializes in the transportation and storage of fine art and luxury items.

Recently, some countries in Europe, including Luxembourg and Switzerland, have passed laws to clamp down on money laundering in the art market. Starting in 2016, Switzerland will cap cash transactions at 100,000 Swiss francs ($135,000). Payments above that cash limit will have to be made by credit card, creating a paper trail, or the seller will have to carry out due diligence to ensure the legal origins of the funds.

The Chinese art market, where regulation is lax, is thought to be particularly prone to money laundering. "The [Chinese] art market has become more and more abnormal," Wang Shouzhi, dean of the Cheung Kong School of Art and Design at Shantou University, told the South China Morning Post in April. "It is saturated with business tricks, fake works and fake prices. … It has become a tool for corruption and money laundering."

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Are_we_sure 5.5 years ago

So yeah.

To use that article to claim the entire art market is based on money laundering is ludicrous. Further more this article is focusing on two things: 1) the NON-Transparent sections of the art market and, more importantly, 2) they are focusing on using art as a way to STORE money. And art would be a useful way to store money because art has value it's an asset, there's a real market that exists. Just like the real estate market or the diamond market, the art market exists completely aside from money laundering. The article refers to money laundering as "an asset class" like real estate and "a moveable asset" like diamonds

From the article

starting to clamp down on the art market to make it transparent....

it's a moveable asset. You can put the art on a private plane and take it anywhere

and this part of the article which is the key part

You can buy something for half a million, not show a passport, and ship it

This and putting art in a freeport is about storing your money. The people who buy something for half-a-million and ship it, expect to set it for half a million OR MORE. They are storing their money. They are not using modern art to conceal secret payments to people. This completely the opposite of how the pizzagate crowd talks about art and money-laundering. They talk about it as if the art is valueless and can ONLY command 10 figure prices because the prices are inflated due to chicanery, This is the characteristics of a a pump and dump stock scheme, not the modern art market. If that were the case, you see quick crashes in the price of over inflated art when you ran out of buyers. That's not happening.

Everything discussed in that article would not apply AT ALL in the case of an auction of one of the most famous works by Jeff Koons where we know the exact provenance of the art and we know who bought it. Who is laundering the money Minuchin? To Whom? The estate of a dead man?

Auction prices are not set beforehand, they are based on demand.
Btw, you can watch the auction for the Koons piece here, seems like there were 4 major bidders. I'm sure the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7StKfeSMeLM

Sotheby's had estimated the piece at 50-70 million before the auction, the gavel fell at 80 million and the fees brought it to $91 million.

The idea that money laundering is raising money in the art market is true...but that doesn't apply to individual pieces. It means there's a rise in price across the board.

Here's a typical way art is used for financial crime. It's when you need move money across borders.

According to the air bill slapped on the crate that arrived at Kennedy International Airport from London, an unnamed painting worth $100 was inside. Only later did federal investigators discover that it was by the American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and worth $8 million. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/arts/design/art-proves-attractive-refuge-for-money-launderers.html

This, of course, is just straight up fraud by someone hoping to fool the authorities it was worth much, but it was 80,000 what he claimed it was worth. So real art crime goes in the opposite direction, claiming something is worth less than it is to avoid taxes or custom fees.