Gioacchino Campolo, Italy’s video poker king, loved art. Among the 300 million euros worth of goods confiscated from him were about 100 very valuable works of art: paintings by Salvador Dali, Giorgio Morandi, Renato Guttuso, Mattia Petri, and Giorgio de Chirico.

Collections in the tens of millions of euros were also confiscated from: Nicola Schiavone, son of Franceso Schiavone, boss of the Casalesi clan within the Naples-based Camorra crime syndicate; and from Gianfranco Becchina, art dealer to Matteo Messina Denaro, boss of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra.

Let’s not, of course, forget the two Van Gogh oil paintings — Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen and View of the Sea at Scheveningen — which were stolen in 2002 from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and later found by Italian financial crime unit officers in Castellamare di Stabia, Naples, in a cottage linked to drug trafficking kingpin Raffaele Imperiale.

And then there are the “Ndrangheta investments in 17th-Century paintings in Lombardy, and the collections of Gennaro Mokbel and Massimo Carminati, active figures on the piazza of Rome, at the center of the must-see documentary Follow the Paintings by Francesca Sironi, Alberto Gottardo and Paolo Fantauzzi.

Are criminals and mafia bosses really this passionate about art? Hard to imagine. More likely it’s a sign of just how much the art market has become a phenomenal money laundering and investment tool for organized crime. It’s a sector that allows dirty money to be hidden, safe and sound, with a guaranteed protection against devaluation over time.

And this isn’t just about laundering. Artwork offers the certainty of an investment that won’t have inflationary repercussions, and with a guaranteed return to boot, provided the money is invested in masterpieces destined to securely maintain their value over time.

Read more at: How Mafia Money Helps Drive The Global Art Market