Nifty secret bank system

[Sandy Sandfort]

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