C'punks, I ran into a western version of "hawala" about 15 years ago. It was a "blocked currency" service offered by a financial group. Here's how it worked: If you live in a currency-blocked country (South African was one, I think it still might be) you couldn't legally move more than a certain amount out money out of the country. To get around this, you would be asked to tear a small denomination piece of paper money (e.g., a 1 rand note) in half. You would keep one half and the financial group would get the other half. Both halves of the bill would have the same serial number, of course. Later, you would get a call telling you where to take the cash you wished to move out of the country. At the appointed time and place an agent of the financial group would meet you. To prove he was the right guy, he would present the group's half of the bill. You would give him the money and the next day an equivalent amount would be on deposit in an account in your name in whatever country (and currency) you specified. The fee for this was usually just the normal money changer's exchange rate. Of course, the original cash never left South Africa, just as the cash in the hawala system never leaves the countries in question either. One more aside. For a brief period when New Zealand was heavily socialist, the government wanted to stop people from traveling (and spending money) abroad. Instead of banning travel, which would have caused a shit storm of controversy, thy just limited the amount of cash that could be taken out of the country to something like a few hundred bucks. Of course, resourceful Kiwis just used their credit cards... S a n d y