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Prominent art market players, including the White Cube Gallery, who represents Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, have been fined from the British tax authorities for non -compliance with rules for money.
White Cube Ukraine occupation, which has set the gallery to process the proceeds of artworks that are sold to support people affected by the war in Ukraine, received a fine of £ 1,350 in 2024 for “not requesting registration for the required time”, according to data from HM Revenue & Customs.
The gallery said that it was failing to register was due to an “administrative error that resulted in a small fine that we had to deal with immediately”. Neither Emin nor Hirst would have done anything wrong.
The fines imposed by HMRC are small: the Tax Authorities have spent 147 against various companies of a total of £ 740,000 for non -registering since 2022, with the highest fines less than £ 25,000.
But a series of respected London galleries, including Arcadia Missa, Tiwani Contemporary and Carl Kostyál, which is based on Savile Row in Mayfair, are affected because HMRC focuses on those in the sector that do not comply with the rules for money.
Various art advisers are also a fine, including Helen Macintyre, who has advised the Qatari -Konklijke family and has attributed the failure to “supervision”.
Carl Kostyál and Arcadia Missa did not respond to requests for comments; Tiwani Contemporary said it had missed the deadline to register because of a flood in the previous building and was now compliant.
Since 2021, companies that sell more than € 10,000 art in one transaction had to register as art market participants at HMRC, as part of a push to ensure that they could identify the people they were dealing with, in a market where anonymity and confidentiality are often appreciated.
Rena Neville, head of the Art Division at Consultancy FCS Compliance, said that in 2021 the regulations for the money washing furnishing had led to “a dramatic improvement” among participants in the art market that obtained more accurate information about whom they were dealing with.
The fines for non -compliance with the rules for releasing money come if the industry is preparing for new sanctions compliance obligations, which have much more difficult penalties.
From May, participants in the art market will have to report that they have assets they have for customers they “know or have a reasonable reason to suspect” on British sanction lists at the Office of Financial Sanctions implementation “as quickly as possible”.
If you do not report that you have the assets of a sanctioned person or that you suspect that you are dealing with a sanctioned person, you can lead to six months in prison. Violating financial sanctions has a punishment of up to seven years.
The nature of the art market makes it mainly exposed to risks with regard to sanctions, according to HMRC, due to the lack of regulations and convenience with which artworks can be moved across borders.
“High value traders”, including those who act in luxury cars, wine and precious metals, will also be subject to sanction obligations from May.
HMRC said it was “here to support companies to protect themselves against criminals who would exploit their services. This includes taking action against the minority that does not meet their legal obligations under the money laundering instructions.”