The laundering option doesn't make sense anymore cause it's so well known and you've opened yourself up to the irs.
It's instead a token to mask another transaction. A way to legitimise a transation for heinous things between rich people. "Oh sure I paid epstein $20m. It was for this art piece, isn't it great? If only I'd know about his misdeeds..." . The art or the money was never the point, the money wasn't initially dirty. The art is a cover they use to legitimise a transaction. Simply paying someone 20m for nothing rendered looks sus af, paying for some art though? All of a sudden it looks innocent.
They're not trying to clean their dirty money, they're trying to mask a transaction. The one who bought the art is the purchaser. Who can then gets a tax break by donating it to a museum sure (assuming they aren't looking to sell some evil services themselves), but that's just a discount on the purchase.
If they make the illigitimate transaction first, and then "sold" the art later, to the original person or someone else, then it would be money laundering, but if the two transactions occurred simultaneously, then it is instead an illegal transaction that included within it some legal goods. And if they sold the art first, then it's simply distribution of illegal things within a vaccuum. The chronology matters a lot.
The wordplay actually helps a great deal here: Money laundering is when you get dirty messy money, and then you clean up the money so its all nice and usable. Like sending a shirt to a laundry service. But that means there needs to be money to launder in the first place. A person who switches all their cash into bitcoin and then back into cash, THEN robs a bank, isn't laundering the stolen money, it came later.
And the rich and powerful know this. Why add extra liability to your actions? So they pre-purchase the inflated-price "legitimate" goods. Epstein infamously had that weird painting of Bill Clinton in underwear, it's probably an excellent example of such an item, since that item would never see open market sale to give a real valuation.
That is money laundering. You are taking money from an illegal transaction and laundering it (or you could say, "cleaning it for the books") with an art sale.
Modern art is money laundering.
There's a far worse theory.
The laundering option doesn't make sense anymore cause it's so well known and you've opened yourself up to the irs.
It's instead a token to mask another transaction. A way to legitimise a transation for heinous things between rich people. "Oh sure I paid epstein $20m. It was for this art piece, isn't it great? If only I'd know about his misdeeds..." . The art or the money was never the point, the money wasn't initially dirty. The art is a cover they use to legitimise a transaction. Simply paying someone 20m for nothing rendered looks sus af, paying for some art though? All of a sudden it looks innocent.
They're not trying to clean their dirty money, they're trying to mask a transaction. The one who bought the art is the purchaser. Who can then gets a tax break by donating it to a museum sure (assuming they aren't looking to sell some evil services themselves), but that's just a discount on the purchase.
I thought that was a FORM of money laundering, but yeah, that makes sense.
It is indeed. Instead of paying they "donate" art.
It is grey area, from what I understand.
If they make the illigitimate transaction first, and then "sold" the art later, to the original person or someone else, then it would be money laundering, but if the two transactions occurred simultaneously, then it is instead an illegal transaction that included within it some legal goods. And if they sold the art first, then it's simply distribution of illegal things within a vaccuum. The chronology matters a lot.
The wordplay actually helps a great deal here: Money laundering is when you get dirty messy money, and then you clean up the money so its all nice and usable. Like sending a shirt to a laundry service. But that means there needs to be money to launder in the first place. A person who switches all their cash into bitcoin and then back into cash, THEN robs a bank, isn't laundering the stolen money, it came later.
And the rich and powerful know this. Why add extra liability to your actions? So they pre-purchase the inflated-price "legitimate" goods. Epstein infamously had that weird painting of Bill Clinton in underwear, it's probably an excellent example of such an item, since that item would never see open market sale to give a real valuation.
That is money laundering. You are taking money from an illegal transaction and laundering it (or you could say, "cleaning it for the books") with an art sale.