money laundering
The week before Christmas, I am standing in line with my kids at my bank. I feel uneasy, because I am planning to execute a risky transaction. I work in Switzerland, and the banks there have a reputation for being mysterious and lucrative. Well, they are indeed lucrative, but not for the people who have accounts. They don’t pay any interest at all, and the only way to guard against inflation is to take money out of the country entirely. Unfortunately international transactions are a bonanza for bank fees and you never know what the exchange rate will be, except that it will definitely be favorable to the banks.
There is one bank that has better exchange rates for the thousands of people who live a few minutes across the border. However, I am unable to have an account there because of my passport - they refuse to do business with people like me. So the only way to save on fees is by changing money with cash.
I have tried not to tell the children much about what we are doing, but they are at an age where they ask a lot of questions. I explain we are taking some money from this bank, changing it at another bank, and then going to our French bank where we live across the border and depositing it. This is clearly a boring way to spend the day, and I promise we can eat at a restaurant for lunch afterwards. I tell them not to talk about what we are doing when we are in line, because I don’t want potential thugs overhearing the fact that we are planning to go around with $10,000 in our pockets for the next couple of hours. I imagine a ring of petty thieves making an excellent living doing imaginary paperwork in the lobby in order to see who is receiving a stack of purple 1000 Swiss franc notes at the counter.
As we are standing in line, it soon becomes obvious that every other person is doing the same thing. We can see the purple notes being counted and going into envelopes. I breathe a sigh of relief, as I imagine the odds are now diminishing as this thug has a much larger pick of targets. The person in front of us is an older woman with a cane, probably less able to thwart a robbery. Surely he will choose her.
We walk a few blocks away with the envelope in my backpack and stand in line again. The place is packed with people getting ready to go on holiday. The old lady is behind us now. At the counter, they perform the transaction, and the envelope is now bulging, as the largest euro bill is 500.
By the time we drive back across the border, the French bank is already closed for the weekend. Banking hours have been reduced to near zero, and there is a new policy that you have to make an appointment to go in the bank at all, even when it is open. I made the mistake of doing this once, and the bank manager spent the whole time trying to sell me insurance.
So I have to use the deposit feature of the ATM, which has an automatic bill counter that is limited by the number of bills. The kids want to play with the money, and drop 4000 euros on the floor in the lobby. I scrabble around to make sure we have accounted for them. Then I have to make two or three separate smaller deposits and feed the bills through several times before it works.
It’s a relief to finish the banking errands, and we celebrate with pad thai. I am not a rich person, but even taking into account the reward for a job well done, by changing money a few times a year this way, I save several thousand euros. I suppose there was luck involved; we never got robbed, and I was able to find all the bills we dropped. We joked that one time we should get all 10 euro notes and have a money bath like Scrooge McDuck before we deposit them.
******
My days of walking around town with a backpack full of cash are over. The kids have grown up and would never agree to follow me around running errands. The only thing that hasn’t changed are the bank’s opening hours.
Snail mail will always be free.