The art of crime - New models of governance, compliance and accountability for the art world

Issue 29/2005 of German magazine Der Spiegel announced that, according to German Police findings, terrorist Mohammed Atta possibly tried to finance the attacks of 11 September 2001 through illegal art trade. According to the publication, Atta had offered antiques to a Professor of the University of Göttingen, who suspected the origin of the artwork and declined. Despite the world’s astonishment at such revelation, Al Qaeda was not the first terrorist organization to use the art and antiques market to finance their criminal operations, a market that only in 2016, handled an officially reported amount of 45 billion dollars, according to the TEFAF Report 2017 on the global art market.