The Sniffer Dog and The Money Mules
Amateur money traffickers on Italian-Swiss border
The Sniffer Dog and The Money Mules
Amateur money traffickers on Italian-Swiss border
COMO − The classic hiding place is a lined belt, used mainly by those crossing the border on foot or by train. Some prefer body belts with ultra-thin pockets that swallow up €500 notes. Female mules tuck the cash into their bra or pants, perhaps thinking that financial police will refrain from making intimate searches. But they are wrong. Many of the customs officers are female and the smugglers also fail to reckon with Tango, a money-sniffing Labrador who never misses a banknote.
Housewives, business people, pensioners, shopkeepers and office workers make up the army of amateur mules who take currency into, but also out of, Switzerland, defying financial police controls without recourse to the cars with hidden compartments used by their professional counterparts. Money trafficking is taking on growing proportions. In the past twelve months, financial police officers at the Ponte Chiasso border crossing have gone into action 650 times, intercepting €54.4 million in banknotes (€13 million) and bearer bonds (€42.4 million), and issuing on-the-spot fines for €500,000.
Lieutenant Colonel Alessandro Luchini, commander of the financial police’s Gruppo Ponte Chiasso, points out that “People think that most of the money is going into Switzerland. But that’s not the case. Fifty per cent of the money intercepted is coming into Italy and this year there has been an increase in the overall amount”. On Tuesday alone, officers winkled out €400,000, without the assistance of Tango, who had the day off.
The first victim was a lady from Siena who withdrew €36,000 from a bank in Lugano and hopped onto the Milan train. She was stopped by financial police at the border, where checks brought to light the banknotes that were hidden in her belt. Officers issued her with an on-the-spot fine of €3,900. A few hours later, a mum and her two kids attempted to drive into Italy at Ponte Chiasso. The trio had split among them the €30,000 they had withdrawn from a bank a few metres into Switzerland, convinced that they were in the clear (the limit is €9,999 per person). While customs officials were writing up the fine, plainclothes officers stopped a 45-year-old commercial graphic designer from Brescia who was driving across the border without declaring the €20,000 he had tucked away in his jacket. He had to cough up a €500 fine.
After lunch, a 60-year-old pharmacist from Molise stepped onto the train bound for Italy with €80,430 in large-denomination banknotes crammed into her pants, jacket and bra. “I need the money to pay my taxes in Italy”, she told officers. Then in the evening, officers pulled off the day’s coup. They stopped an Alfa Romeo Giulietta at the Brogeda crossing. At the wheel was a Denmark-based Australian financial adviser whose case contained a carefully folded pair of jeans with €270,500 in undeclared notes. Officers made a precautionary seizure of €130,000 on the spot until the ministry decides what penalty to impose.
__._,_.___
Posts
