The Mystery of the Disappearing van Gogh

The Mystery of the Disappearing van Gogh

After a painting by the Dutch artist sold at auction, a movie producer claimed to be the owner. It later vanished from sight, with a trail leading to Caribbean tax havens and a jailed Chinese billionaire.

Kevin Ching, then the head of Sotheby’s in Asia, appeared at a Hong Kong ceremony in 2014 to present the van Gogh painting to Wang Zhongjun, the movie producer who claimed to have bought it.

But Mr. Wang may not be the real owner at all. Two other men were linked to the purchase: an obscure middleman in Shanghai who paid Sotheby’s bill through a Caribbean shell company, and the person he answered to — a reclusive billionaire in Hong Kong.

In one scandal, the United States charged a Malaysian businessman with laundering billions of dollars from a state development fund, using some of it to buy art at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. In 2020, the Senate issued a scathing report on how auction houses and art dealers had unwittingly helped Russians evade sanctions by allowing others to buy art for them.

“white gloves,” a term used in China to describe proxy shareholders meant to hide companies’ true owners.

China’s princelings

Mr. Xiao’s easy access to money outside China through his offshore network allowed him to bypass the country’s strict currency controls; he may have acted as a kind of banker for Mr. Wang.

Mr. Xiao may have wanted to acquire an asset that could be transported across borders in a private jet, free from scrutiny by bank compliance officers and government regulators.

<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/29/world/asia/van-gogh-china-buyer.html>