Artworks can be relatively easily sold across national borders without alerting the authorities, with the subjective nature of the value allowing prices to be easily inflated or deflated.
I have, for a long time, wondered what portion of the high-end art market consists of money laundering. Those are exactly the properties one would want for a money laundering vehicle.
The NACP said Russian oligarchs were still all too easily able to “hide and launder their money through art objects” despite the sanctions imposed on them.