// With ever increasing sanctions on Russian oligarchs, what might be some unintended consequences?
// Late 2022 - A Discord Server named “Monument Men”
[Carter] I told you before [Glafira], I’m out of the game.
[Glafira] I know, I know. You said that after the job in Paris. But I’ve got an angle you might like. It’s about sticking it to Russian oligarchs.
[Carter] Wait… what do you have against those nation-destroying and wealth-extracting jerks?
[Glafira] Aren’t they responsible for funding the war machine that destroyed the Mariupol Museum in Kyiv, dedicated to your favorite artist Arkhip Kuindzhi?
[Carter] Okay, I’m listening…
[Glafira] All across the world are “free ports”, technically called free economic zones. These are areas in which companies are taxed very lightly or not at all to encourage economic activity. A classic example is the Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics Base, or LADOL. It provides logistics, engineering and other support services to offshore oil & gas exploration. LADOL encourages the multinational firms exploiting the Nigerian deep water oil reserves to use Nigerian companies, thereby creating over 100k Nigerians jobs as well as bringing that international training, knowledge and technology into the country.
[Carter] So what does this have to do with sticking it to Russian oligarchs?
[Glafira] LADOL is an example of a “good” Free Port. The primary reason the rich and powerful love free ports is because they are an amazing way to launder wealth and avoid taxation.
The Geneva free port in Switzerland has $100B of artwork sitting in storage. In the US, there are no federal import duties on art within a free port, free ports have emerged as a legal way for art dealers and collectors to avoid paying duties and taxes on artworks they might be storing or planning on selling. And guess who has invested heavily in artwork as a way to diversify their portfolios? Russian oligarchs. Shell companies enable the oligarchs to conduct offshore transactions, making the arts industry the largest unregulated market in the United States.
All that artwork, along with high-end watches, precious metals, and a host of other hard-assets are just sitting in these free ports. At the same time, sanctions on the oligarchs are growing, and they are finding it harder to pay their bills. Public and government sentiment against Russian oligarchs is at an all time low.
It’s time to put a crew together, and hit a free port and rob them. You in?