In the pilot script for ZÜRICH, the trail of the missing painting Sara and Jade are hunting goes ice cold when it disappears inside the Zürich Free Port.
What the heck is a free port anyway (asks everyone who isn’t a gazillionaire)?
“Free ports are the greatest museums no one can see” — director of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez.
Free ports, children, are where rich people stash their loot far from the prying eyes of pesky tax authorities. That’s because while in the warehouse, items are considered in “transit,” and owners are not required to pay import taxes or customs duties. Buy a painting in Basel or New York, ship it to a free port, and voila! The sales tax disappears, that is, until (and if) you take it out again — and that is the problem: many people who collect art as a way to invest their grotesque wealth never do — which is why the director of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, described free ports as the greatest museums no one can see.
Many tax-ambiguous countries (e.g., Cyprus and Luxembourg) have free ports, but the big Kahoona is in Geneva with an estimated value of $100 billion. The number of artworks stored in the free port is around 1.2 million; by comparison, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City has about 200,000 artworks.
What originated in the 19th century for the temporary storage of commodities like grain and tea has now become a storage locker for the superrich: diamonds, wine, cars — you know, the yuzh. With their controlled climates, confidential record keeping, and enormous potential for tax evasion, free ports are the parking lot of choice for oligarchs and others of their ilk looking to round out investment portfolios with art-as-bullion. How nice for them, no?
So, just what priceless pieces of world patrimony are locked away?
Since most art is quietly tucked into storage spaces, it isn’t easy to know exactly what is where.
However, assorted legal disputes, investigations, and sundry exhibitions featuring stored hoarded works have provided glimpses of works vanished from public view.1
This rare Etruscan sarcophagus was discovered in Geneva and found among 45 crates of looted antiquities, some still wrapped in Italian newspapers from the 1970s.
Or how about a little Gustave Klimt (liberated from the Nazis and now imprisoned in a free port) to round out your storage unit’s walls?
As a writer, the art world is a wellspring of material — thieves, forgers, amoral billionaires, and the people who hope to profit from them: it’s all here, even if the masterpieces are not.
I live in Basel and attend Art Basel every year as a commoner after the preview days are over, and the big buyers and celebrities have flown their private jets back to Dubai or wherever.