Angelika Hellweger assesses the National Crime Agency’s art storage sector amber alert

With the National Crime Agency (NCA) having issued an alert regarding the risks of criminal activity in the art storage sector, Angelika Hellweger assessed its main points, why it was needed and the challenges it presents.

In a piece, which was published by Solicitors Journal, she explains how the art world has come under particular scrutiny since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the geopolitical shifts and sanctions that have followed. There has been a closer focus on the art world’s anonymous and secretive sales, the movement and storage of high-value items and the conduct of Russian high net worth individuals.

Angelika says

the NCA’s “Amber Alert: Financial Sanctions Evasion, Money Laundering & Cultural Property Trafficking Through the Art Storage Sector’’ is a warning to all those in the art sector to be alert to a wide variety of offences.

She highlights the alert’s reference to high net worth individuals trying to evade sanctions by holding billions of pounds’ worth of items in warehouses and freeports and other situations worthy of examination. She also outlines the obligations such activity places on those in the art sector and possible red flags that should be cause for concern.

The full article can be read here.

Featured at: Solicitors Journal