A London art dealer recently pled guilty to selling artworks to a collector sanctioned by the US government since 2019 for giving money to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group.
Oghenochuko Ojiri pled guilty today to eight charges of failing to disclose potential terrorist financing during a court hearing in London. On May 8, he was charged by Metropolitan Police as “the first person to be charged with a specific offence under section 21A of the Terrorism Act 2000.”
The charges occurred after an investigation into terrorist financing by officers from the National Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit (NTFIU), part of the police department’s Counter Terrorism Command, in partnership with the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) in His Majesty’s Treasury, His Majesty’s Revenue and Custom (the organization that regulates the art sector), and the Met’s Arts & Antiques Unit.
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The New York Times reported that Ojiri, 53, owned a namesake gallery in East London and appeared as an art expert on the BBC antiques show Bargain Hunt and other programs.
Prosecutor Lyndon Harris told the court in London that Ojiri had sold several artworks to Nazem Ahmad, and the art dealer knew Ahmad was suspected to be a financier of terrorism by the United States and Britain due to Ahmad’s links to Hezbollah and the existing sanctions.
Harris also said that in addition to negotiating the sales of artworks, Ojiri had dealt with Ahmad directly and congratulated him on the acquisitions which were transported to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and Beirut.
“At the time of the transactions, Mr. Ojiri knew that Nazem Ahmad had been sanctioned in the U.S. as a suspected terrorist financier,” Harris said. “Mr. Ojiri accessed news reports about Mr. Ahmad’s designation and engaged in discussions with others about it, indicating his knowledge or suspicions.”
The New York Times also reported that in prosecution documents summarizing the case against Ahmand, Ojiri stated the art dealer filled out paperwork connected to art sales for Ahmad in the names of “other individuals suggested by Mr. Ahmad’s associates, in what is alleged to be an attempt to disguise the true owner of the works of art.”
A press statement from the Metropolitan Police said the eight charges “relate to a period from October 2020 to December 2021.” Harris said the value of the artworks that Ojiri sold to Ahmad between October 2020 and January 2022 was approximately £140,000 ($186,000).
In 2023, Ahmad was previously charged with by federal prosecutors with nine counts for violating and evading US sanctions through $440 million worth of imports and exports in art and diamonds. Eight others, including several of his family members, were also charged.