ABSTRACT
Art and antiquities have been identified as assets for terrorist financing and money laundering, and their trade is, therefore, being targeted for regulation. However, there is little data on cultural property trading and even less on cultural property crime, and cultural property traders are resisting anti-money laundering (AML) regulation. This chapter presents evidence from open-source research that demonstrates the participation of organised crime networks, organised crime groups, politically motivated armed groups, and politically exposed persons in the art market. It also demonstrates the contributions of innovative assemblages of governance to generating and mobilising such evidence in order to inform and augment cultural property policing. This evidence indicates that the market is being exploited and must be regulated. However, as there is little policing to identify and stop such activity and there is ever more online activity that is even more difficult to police, the most effective form of AML action would be monitoring, investigating, and prosecuting suspect activity under existing law.
