In monopol, art lawyer Dr. Pascal Decker spoke with editor-in-chief Elke Buhr about the requirements of money laundering prevention in the sale of art. The LegeARTIS app, which he co-founded, is designed to help the art trade avoid money laundering
European legislators have successively tightened the requirements for the prevention of money laundering in the art market. In the European Money Laundering Directive, which came into force at the beginning of 2020, all art market participants were mentioned for the first time in the circle of obligated parties, i.e. galleries, but also transport companies, warehouses and so on. Since then, the persons mentioned there must always comply with the requirements of money laundering prevention when carrying out transactions.
Typically, such transactions take place at a trade fair. When you're standing in your booth at a trade fair, you don't have time to call your lawyer and say, please check my buyer's details here. This has to be digitized and standardized. LegeARTIS is based on the idea of making this possible in this situation via an app. You scan the prospective buyer's ID, then it is checked in the search services accessible for the app, and after one or two minutes a result comes up: a red, yellow or green flag. Green is unproblematic, yellow indicates certain information, red means something is wrong. The whole process is documented in the app so that you can prove that you have fulfilled your obligations in the event of an inspection.