THE HUMANITY DIALOGUES: #5 THE INTERNATIONAL ART MARKET, MOVING ASSETS, & FINANCING THE WAR: UKRAINE NOW!
The Humanity Dialogues #5: THE INTERNATIONAL ART MARKET, MOVING ASSETS, & FINANCING THE WAR: UKRAINE NOW!
Originally recorded on 03.25.2022
More info on the series: https://reees.macmillan.yale.edu/events/humanity-dialogues
As the war in Ukraine continues, Russia faces sanctions imposed by international governments and organizations intended to disempower the Russian war machine by stopping the flow of money to Russian coffers and pressuring elites to exercise political influence. But sanctions are only effective to the extent they cannot be bypassed. With an estimated $50 billion in annual transaction volume and a global value of $1.7 trillion, art represents a massive asset class, yet the market for art remains largely unregulated and is characterized by opaque transactions. While new opportunities for circumventing sanctions may have recently emerged through crypto-based markets for NFTs, it has long been possible to warehouse valuable art objects in special tax havens, effectively off-shoring these physical assets. What can be done today to close this crucial loophole?
Speakers:
DANIEL GLASER served as Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes in the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence from 2011–2017 where he helped to formulate and coordinate counterterrorist financing, Anti-Money Laundering (AML), sanctions, and other counter-illicit finance policies and strategies within the U.S. Treasury Department, and globally. Glaser also served as Treasury’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes from 2004–2011, and the Head of the U.S. Delegation to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) from 2001–2011. Glaser is currently the global head of jurisdictional services at K2 Integrity.
WILLIAM N. GOETZMANN is the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies and Faculty Director of the International Center for Finance at the Yale School of Management. His research is focused on investments, including the art market. His past work includes studies of investment fraud and operational risk. His most recent book is Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible (Princeton, 2016).
SIMON JOHNSON is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he is also the head of the Global Economics and Management group. In 2007–08, Professor Johnson was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. In February 2021, Johnson joined the board of directors of Fannie Mae
Moderated by MARTA KUZMA Marta Kuzma is Professor of Art at and the former Dean of the Yale School of Art. She is also the former Chancellor of the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm, Sweden. Kuzma arrived in Kyiv in 1990 to found the Soros Center for Contemporary Art where she had been director through 2000. Her curatorial and academic practice centers around art’s position within the larger economic, social, and political landscape as pursued in her postgraduate research in aesthetics and art theory from the Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy in London.
This event is introduced by MOLLY BRUNSON, Associate Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Department of the History of Art and Director of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program, Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. This series is organized and supported by REEES: The Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.
Art Design by: Milo Bonacci, Yale MFA ’21