Little is known about Nazem Said Ahmad, the Lebanese businessman and high-profile collector, but one thing that’s certain is that he has liberal tastes in art, bought a lot of it, and wasn’t quiet about it. Before it was shut down, his Instagram account, where he posted regularly about his acquisitions, had 172,000 followers. His bio read: “Art has no rules.”
Today, Ahmad stands accused of using his vast art-and-diamond collection to launder money for Hezbollah, the Islamic militant group that was officially classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2019, as well as for evading sanctions placed on him by the U.K. and the U.S.
