Dirty Paintbrushes
The tracker for financial crime in the art world. Fraud, money laundering, terror financing, sanctions. All in one place, up to date.
Why Dirty Paintbrushes?
The art market is a sector that has long been overlooked from a regulatory perspective. It is highly opaque and inherently cross-border, which makes it particularly vulnerable to fraud, tax evasion, sanctions circumvention, and in some cases, the financing of criminal networks.
Dirty Paintbrushes started as a research question. How can something as cultural and subjective as art be used to move and obscure illicit finance?
While studying International Relations at King's College London, I focused on financial crime and non-traditional assets. During my exchange at Georgetown University, I developed a research paper titled “Dirty Paintbrushes: The Use of the Art Market in Financing Terrorist Activity”, looking at recent case studies in the UK and US, from NFTs to antiquities.
That work led me to focus more closely on the art market as a financial crime risk area, and made it clear how fragmented this space is. Information is difficult to track, often reactive, and rarely brought together in one place.
This platform is a way to collate and follow developments at the intersection of the art market and financial crime. It is designed for anyone interested in this space who wants a clearer, more efficient way to stay informed. You can also use the comment feature to add analysis, flag connections, and interact with others following this area.