Nazem Ahmad in his Beirut flat. (Credit: Office of Foreign Assets Control, US Treasury Department)
“Art Has No Rules” is the caption Nazem Ahmad uses in lieu of a profile picture for his Instagram account, where he has over 172,000 followers and exhibits parts of his vast art collection.
The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) decided to prove him wrong. As part of its campaign against a vast international money laundering and tax evasion network, the Treasury on April 18 imposed sanctions on 52 individuals and entities in Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Angola, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.
What do they have in common? Their links to this businessman and art collector, placed on OFAC’s Specially Designated Persons (SDN) list in December 2019 for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material or technological support for, goods or services to or in support of Hezbollah.
Mohammad Afif Nabulsi, Hezbollah spokesperson, said that the party “does not express any position on this matter.”
In affluent downtown Beirut, there is no one at Artual Gallery. The space, which this month is exhibiting the works of an Italian artist, is one of the sanctioned entities.
According to Ahmad’s daughter, these accusations are unfounded. “I am shocked at so much violence,” said Hind Ahmad by phone. “Instead of going after the real criminals in this country, they are going after those who have worked hard their entire lives abroad.” The younger Ahmad runs Artual Gallery and is one of the individuals targeted by the sanctions, along with her brother Firas and her mother Rima Baker.
The British government also announced that it had frozen the assets of Nazem Ahmad.
His 30-year-old daughter, who has lived between Belgium, France and Britain, said she was “raised in a culture very distant” from that of Hezbollah.
“My father is far from politics. He appeared once on a video with [Hezbollah MP] Mohammad Raad, but that doesn’t mean anything, since he hangs out with everyone,” she added.
Photos of him with former Prime Minister Saad Hariri or Kataeb MP Nadim Gemayel are posted on the Instagram page of the businessman, with whom L’Orient-Le Jour could not speak directly.
‘Major war against Shiite Muslim’
As sanctions prohibit any US company or citizen from doing business with designated individuals or entities, they could force Hind Ahmad to “close her gallery.” “My passion will end because of a huge injustice,” she said. Her husband Daoud el-Riz, a French-Congolese national, has also been sanctioned.
According to the OFAC statement, Hind Ahmad has been accused of purchasing artwork from US companies on behalf of her father since 2018.
She “also acted as a broker for the sale of art in the ultimate beneficial interest of her father, approaching witting and unwitting studios and galleries.”
Since 2019, Nazem Ahmad has allegedly used family members, associates and entities “to maintain his ability to finance Hizballah and his luxurious lifestyle,” the statement added.
“I sell paintings for $2,500, $5,000. Do you really think Hezbollah needs that?” she asked. “This type of organization is funded by states, not by art galleries.”
The gallerist says this US “persistence” against her family comes from a “major war against Shiite Muslims, and from “clearly envious people who do not accept my father’s success.”
While he is now known as the white wolf in Lebanon, there is very little information on the background of Nazem Ahmad, who made his fortune in the trade of rough diamonds from South Africa and settled in Belgium, where he obtained the nationality.
It is a journey that began when his family, originally from the small village of Haris, near Tibnin, in southern Lebanon, moved to Sierra Leone, where Nazem Ahmad was born in 1956.
“I am proud to be from South Lebanon, where, 70 years ago, few people could afford to buy clothes,” he told Daraj in 2021, in an interview at his luxurious apartment in downtown Beirut.
In Belgium he was bitten by the art bug, which he passed on to his six children. Selections Arts, a Lebanese-Emirati online art magazine, in 2019 published (and later deleted) an article on the diamond dealer and collector, in which he spoke about his very first purchase, in the early 1990s: a work on paper by Pablo Picasso.
In 30 years, Ahmad and his wife reportedly accumulated a significant collection of works, including pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, as well as some emerging artists, a number of which are displayed in their Beirut apartment.
‘Reprisals by Hezbollah’ or ‘the Americans’
It was in September 2003 that his legal troubles began. While running the company Sierra Gem Diamonds, he was arrested in Antwerp as part of an investigation into conflict diamonds from Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), according to Tunisian journalist Bassam Bounenni’s book, “Diamants de sang” (Blood Diamonds) (Outre-terre, 2005). Bounenni highlights the economic conflict between Israel and Lebanon, as the “two countries have the same great tradition” in this trade.
The indictment, made public Tuesday and issued by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, uncovered about $440 million worth of imports and exports, mainly of artwork and diamonds, to US by entities linked to Ahmad after the sanctions were imposed. Since December 2019, nearly $160 million worth of transactions have gone through the US financial system.
The millionaire, who has reportedly lived with his family in Lebanon for years, is said to be discreet and does not travel with “a horde of bodyguards.”
“Everyone knows Nazem Ahmad here,” said a businessman. But silence has prevailed in his circles since the sanctions were announced Tuesday.
“It’s a very relevant decision because it’s time to better regulate the global art market,” said a European collector, who spoke on condition of anonymity, though “people don’t care about the origins when they absolutely want to get an artwork.”
All other figures contacted by L’Orient-Le Jour refused to comment on the case for fear of “reprisals by Hezbollah” or “the Americans.”
This story originally ran in French in L’Orient-Le Jour, translated by Joelle Khoury.