Talks held in Riyadh on 18 February between the US President Donald Trump and the Russian President Vladamir Putin called for an economic “normalisation” between the two nations. Should they reach their logical conclusion of lifting US sanctions on Russia, they could upend the world order and also restructure the art market.
Although on 28 February Trump extended sanctions against Russia for another year, just two weeks earlier, on 5 February, the Trump-appointed US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she was scrapping Task Force KleptoCapture, which the US Department of Justice had created under the Biden administration to punish Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It targeted Russian oligarchs and associated individuals with the ultimate goal of property forfeiture to aid Ukraine. In another until recently unfathomable about-face in US policy, Trump has now publicly blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for starting the war.
‘Elimination of cartels’
“Task Force KleptoCapture, the Department’s Kleptocracy Team, and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, shall be disbanded,” Bondi wrote in a memorandum released on 5 February. “Attorneys assigned to those initiatives shall return to their prior posts, and resources currently devoted to those efforts shall be committed to the total elimination of Cartels and TCOs [the transnational criminal organisations that the Trump administration accuses of flooding the US with fentanyl]”.
The worst-case scenario would be to permit those who funded this war to get away with their art collections intact
Bondi’s announcement came as the Trump administration was accused of building its own kleptocracy. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has shredded through the federal bureaucracy, claiming to have identified egregious waste of taxpayer funds.
Andrew C. Adams, now a partner in the law firm Steptoe, who had helped build the task force and worked there until 2023, described to The Art Newspaper the steps after which the rollback in the task force would impact the art market.
“The work of the task force was conducted in close coordination with, and often directly through, US Attorneys’ Offices around the country—disbanding the task force as a means of structuring and directing matters involving violation of sanctions and export controls related to Russia’s aggression emphatically does not equate to the end of those investigations,” Adams said in an email. “Unless, and until, the sanctions themselves are rolled back, the art market is unlikely to feel any shift in enforcement in the key offices that focus on this sector of the economy.”
Adams has worked on a civil forfeiture case against Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian billionaire known for his purchase of the American publisher Malcolm Forbes’s collection of Fabergé eggs, which are now housed in a palace museum in St Petersburg opened by a foundation associated with Vekselberg. He was targeted for heavy sanctions by the US Department of the Treasury immediately after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine to strike at the network around Putin and the Kremlin. Also indicted was Vladimir Voronchenko, the director of the foundation, who fled to Russia when the case was lauched.
Seized yacht yet to be sold
As of February 2025, Vekselberg’s 255-ft $90m yacht Tango, seized in Palma, Spain in 2022 as part of a KleptoCapture operation, had yet to be sold to benefit Ukraine and has cost US taxpayers $32m to maintain, according to the Luxurylaunches.com lifestyle publication.
“There must be repentance and reparations for the crimes committed against Ukrainian people, civilian infrastructure and cultural institutions,” says Irina Tarsis, an art historian and lawyer who is the founder of the New York- and Zurich-based Center for Art Law. “The worst-case scenario would be to permit those who encouraged and funded this war, as well as benefited from it, to get away with their art collections and wealth intact. There can be no unchecked lifting of sanctions from persons who enabled the Russian war of aggression.”
Auction houses and “top-tier dealers and fairs”, she says, are likely to avoid “handling frozen assets or engaging with suspicious activities” and “can and will self-police”. The centre also tracks and compiles anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.
The change to enforcement priorities by US authorities means that individuals can “exploit reduced scrutiny to move illicit cultural goods more freely”, says one expert
Larisa Shpineva/Alamy Stock Photo
A spokesperson for Christie’s told The Art Newspaper: “Christie’s has a global anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance programme, which includes client due diligence and screening checks. We remain committed to complying with all relevant AML and sanctions laws, and closely monitor sanctions lists.” Sotheby’s, Phillips and Bonham’s declined to comment.
Madison Leeson, a Genoa-based postdoctoral researcher in the Centre for Cultural Heritage Technology at the Italian Institute for Technology, who specialises in trafficking, says she has studied the structure of Russia’s Kremlin-connected social network and the role of art and antiquities collectors. “While we can’t predict anything with certainty, the reorganisation of US anti-corruption initiatives, including the disbanding of the KleptoCapture task force, could have broad implications for the illicit art trade,” she says. “Many high-value assets, including art, are often moved through networks of intermediaries, shell companies and offshore jurisdictions, making enforcement efforts reliant on coordinated, multi-agency investigations.
“With a shift in enforcement priorities, we’ve seen some concern that these networks could exploit reduced scrutiny to move illicit cultural goods more freely. This would complicate efforts to trace provenance, enforce sanctions, and prevent the laundering of wealth through the art market. Enhanced international cooperation would be important for both addressing these challenges and filling the investigative gap left by KleptoCapture, particularly as illicit networks often span multiple jurisdictions.”
Anton Moiseienko,a senior lecturer in law at the Australian National University in Canberra, who is an expert on sanctions, says that “the EU has institutional weaknesses stemming from the fact that sanctions enforcement remains within member states’ jurisdiction, with very different levels of capacity and commitment across the EU”. He says, however, that he would not interpret this policy change as “signalling a free-for-all in the art world, since criminal liability for sanctions breaches remains there”. In conclusion, he says, “whether we continue to see a proactive investigatory effort to track down oligarch-owned art, yachts or other high-value assets is an open question.”
