(11/15) Enter Russian oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev. In 2002 Rybo would form a kind of partnership with the man behind the Geneva Freeport, Yves Bouvier. But the exact details of that partnership led to a #betrayal a decade in the making - and an accusation of a $1.2 billion overcharge.

(10/15) Ergo the lack of transparency in the art market abets the looted artifacts trade: multiple discoveries of illegally excavated Etruscan artifacts have been found stored in the GF. Sounds pretty #sketchy, right? There's more, a $1-billion-scandal kind of more.

(9/15) Unlike flying into a country and declaring your possessions (especially a $$$ painting), with a free port all the info you need to have is value of the painting, the shipper, & the consignee. The GF even provides a fiduciary service that sends the painting for you: it can be totally anon!

(7/15) So the Geneva Freeport may look unassuming, but it holds one of the world’s largest art collections: ~1.2 million pieces of art in storage, estimated at a value of $100 billion. It's like one of the greatest museums no one has access to. Or, almost no one...

(5/15) In 19th century US, when rich aristocratic families went #broke (how embarrassing!) they would sell their collections anonymously, and new money families wanting to impress would buy these collections (also anonymously: too taboo to buy the property of members of the same social class!) So...

(4/15) A: pretty much everyone in the art world. This has been the standard since 15th century art markets in Antwerp. Steep competition = smart to keep an artist’s clients #secret to not get taken by other artists. But there are more recent, elitist roots to this secrecy: think The Great Gatsby...

(2/15)Let's start with our #hotshot art dealer: Inigo Philbrick, behind what the FBI claims is the largest art fraud in American history. Philbrick was selling shares of paintings he didn't own or that didn't even exist: like one big Ponzi scheme. But how on 🌍 did he sell even one nonexistent share?

Some of the most unregulated trades are drugs, weapons, and...the art market? A thread on how a young #hotshot art dealer, the looted artifacts trade, and a duped Russian oligarch connect back to lack of transparency in the art world (adapted from a paper for @lizmarlowe.bsky.social's class).
(1/15)