Where to put $10-20K in Asia? As a hedge against the west

[daxbr]

You lost me whats this got to do with US? He said below:



Why would he walk into the lions mouth of western supremacy aka US if he wants to hedge against the west

So you think Asians have no creative ways to separate you from your money. :
https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/11...-theft-from-tourists-luggage-at-suvarnabhumi/

 

[andres33]

In your poket it will the best solution and in a currency safe like CHF. But if you need to travel and can't transport more tha 9999€, you can try to buy a prepaid visa or mastercard. A visa platinum prepaid card can be load with bigs amounts, you will have a possitbility to cash it where you want till 10.000€/day. The visa warranty that your money is free and like cash. Not need that it's parked in Asia America or Africa. Your money is where you go. Evidently you will need to pay the card, you will need to pay an annual fee, a % to load it and you will have some fees to give cash in ATM, but it's the price for the freedom.

 

[Martin Everson]

So you think Asians have no creative ways to separate you from your money. :

lol....I guess they rely on the fact they believe the victim is smuggling cash and hence won't report the money stolen .

 

[hernanday]

I second the posters who says CHF notes in your pocket. You only got $20k. Stick 10k in your pocket, and give 10k to your kid, wife, friend, travel companion with you. You can even hire a PA for a week, have them come with you on the trip. I know a guy who was rich, but had his money from.... less than reputable..... sources, lets say, he would hire like 30 PAs give them just under 10k a pop (on those prepaid credit cards aka travel/money cards), gave them $500 they can use as spending money. Of which they usually spent before they even got to the airport security desk. That $300k a week he was moving internationally. No reporting to anyone. He rarely got ripped off too, because these people were getting fully paid vacations, they had cards but no pass numbers. Yeah a few got lost, but it was largely effective.

I truly believe that all these laws like KYC/AML are a massive waste of time and government resources. They work like this, you can't do X if you are sitting down, but if you wear a monacle and standup you can do X.

You must declare 10k+ when crossing the border, but think of the average American crossing the border having credit/debit card limits combining over 10k? No one is declaring this. You can get corporate credit cards, open like 100 companies. Get 10k on the credit cards a pop. Hire a bunch of broke people as PAs, give them round trip full expense paid $1000 trips in the low season. Move $9k-8k net after cost, across the border per PA. This means if someone has the mean to rent/lease a private plane like an older 747, that seats 600 people, 600 PA x $8k = $6 million in cash moved with zero reporting, possibly in cash.

Now do you really think any legit drug king pin who has like slaves with a 3rd grade education by the hundreds who don't even know how to use a debit card. Do you think these laws are stopping them? The government is just pretending to stop criminals, we know they aren't. Even if they did truly cut the numbers so a person could only bring $100 across the border, the criminals would just buy an airfield shut it down to the public and claim it was closed to traffic generally and do cash drops on them once a month with planes loaded with cash.

While technically customs could come and search it, these criminals are one step ahead. They'll claim one plane that matches the description of another they own, is going to come from Medillin Colombia to some place in Missouri. At the same time, they will fly DOMESTICALLY a plane from Alabama, flying to a near by destination. Have the planes land at opposite airports where they should have landed and arrive at the time they opposite plane should have landed. Meaning that the domestic one gets searched as the suspected plane Colombian coke plane, while the coke/money plane doesn't get harassed at all because its coming from Alabama.

 

[hernanday]

In your poket it will the best solution and in a currency safe like CHF. But if you need to travel and can't transport more tha 9999€, you can try to buy a prepaid visa or mastercard. A visa platinum prepaid card can be load with bigs amounts, you will have a possitbility to cash it where you want till 10.000€/day. The visa warranty that your money is free and like cash. Not need that it's parked in Asia America or Africa. Your money is where you go. Evidently you will need to pay the card, you will need to pay an annual fee, a % to load it and you will have some fees to give cash in ATM, but it's the price for the freedom.

I believe they have expiry dates though no?

 

[hernanday]

In your damn pocket!!!!



Again in your damn pocket!!!!

In a real economic crisis or if you loose access to western countries then again cash is king. Speak to Syrian middle class who ended up refugees from one year to the next with no ability to open a bank account anywhere in the west .

If the Western system truly goes down, he needs to have his money either in cash, a safe or not in the financial system. When Syria went to s**t and rebels started cutting the internet and all that you don't want your money trapped offline.

 

[Gediminas]

Now do you really think any legit drug king pin who has like slaves with a 3rd grade education by the hundreds who don't even know how to use a debit card. Do you think these laws are stopping them? The government is just pretending to stop criminals, we know they aren't. Even if they did truly cut the numbers so a person could only bring $100 across the border, the criminals would just buy an airfield shut it down to the public and claim it was closed to traffic generally and do cash drops on them once a month with planes loaded with cash.

While technically customs could come and search it, these criminals are one step ahead. They'll claim one plane that matches the description of another they own, is going to come from Medillin Colombia to some place in Missouri. At the same time, they will fly DOMESTICALLY a plane from Alabama, flying to a near by destination. Have the planes land at opposite airports where they should have landed and arrive at the time they opposite plane should have landed. Meaning that the domestic one gets searched as the suspected plane Colombian coke plane, while the coke/money plane doesn't get harassed at all because its coming from Alabama.

You are watching too many movies, man.

 

[countryfree]

A "hedge against the West". I kinda like the idea, but I don't think your money would be safe in a bank if there's a major trouble, any bank in any country. Better invest in real estate. There are plenty of countries where 20K can get you something you could rent. But you need to travel there to buy, and make a contract with some local property manager. Then, I recommend to travel there at least once a year.

 

[OTR365]

Like already mentioned by others, if things get tough, you might not be able to access your money in Asia.
But if you still insist on this idea, I suggest opening an account at BullionStar (Singapore) and keeping your money there in Singapore dollars. Remote account opening and a light KYC for 20K.

I don't know if they are really safer than others, but here's the marketing speech:

When you hold cash in a BullionStar account, you are holding cash outside the fractional-reserve banking system. BullionStar does not operate under any banking system. In this way, a BullionStar account is safer than a Singapore bank account. BullionStar is headquartered in Singapore, one of the safest and most secure jurisdictions in the world, a country with strong property rights and a strong rule of law.

Unlike a bank account where the depositor is an unsecured creditor of a bank and at risk of a bail-in, BullionStar accounts are operated under what is known as a single-purpose Stored Value Facility (SVF) as defined under Singaporean law. Under this facility, BullionStar customers make use of the SVF to fund and maintain funds on their BullionStar accounts and to purchase products such as bullion from BullionStar. Funds in BullionStar’s SVF are diversified across physical cash, precious metals and a number of different Singapore bank accounts used by BullionStar.

 

[JohnLocke]

A "hedge against the West". I kinda like the idea,

I don't think 20K will move much in this world but if someone believe to be able to start a new wave so it shall be.

Like already mentioned by others, if things get tough, you might not be able to access your money in Asia.
But if you still insist on this idea, I suggest you open an account at BullionStar (Singapore) and keep your money there in Singapore dollars.

I second that.

 

[ontherun]

Someone here mentioned Shinhan Bank. I can confirm that personal accounts can be opened on a tourist visa. But it is a "serious" bank, who will very definitely report you to the places whos identity document you used to open the account. Not so useful to hide something.

 

[andres33]

I believe they have expiry dates though no?

Yes. The validity is for 3 year. And it can be without name (anonymous).

 

[Martin Everson]

If the Western system truly goes down, he needs to have his money either in cash, a safe or not in the financial system. When Syria went to s**t and rebels started cutting the internet and all that you don't want your money trapped offline.

Exactly.

 

[dvm]

I know a guy who was rich, but had his money from.... less than reputable..... sources, lets say, he would hire like 30 PAs give them just under 10k a pop (on those prepaid credit cards aka travel/money cards),

Why would not he transport cards himself? The 10K restriction is usually about cash, it's not applicable to cards.

 

[hernanday]

Why would not he transport cards himself? The 10K restriction is usually about cash, it's not applicable to cards.

A large key in evading controls like this is to not go against the perceived "spirit" of the law. The courts might give you the cards back but the border guards will view it as suspect and might try to allege 100 credit cards... hmmm... abnormal, must be doing cc fraud. The 10k restriction is about currency. Spread out across PAs it raises no suspicion. ie 1 person having 20 cards, is much less suspect, than 1 guy with 100. The real reason why politicians don't care about these controls is they use others to move their money like this.

 

[dvm]

A large key in evading controls like this is to not go against the perceived "spirit" of the law. The courts might give you the cards back but the border guards will view it as suspect and might try to allege 100 credit cards... hmmm... abnormal, must be doing cc fraud. The 10k restriction is about currency. Spread out across PAs it raises no suspicion. ie 1 person having 20 cards, is much less suspect, than 1 guy with 100. The real reason why politicians don't care about these controls is they use others to move their money like this.

I think you and your friend kinda exaggerate the scale of the problem. Nobody gives 2 fucks about how many cards you are moving through the border, because as long as you keep your money in a bank, the government guys have different leverages on it - way more efficient than catching you with cards in the airport. Conversely, when you have your money in cash, basically nobody besides you can control it and the government guys certainly do not like this state of affairs. Thus the 10K restriction on cash transportation.

 

[JohnLocke]

So you say it won't look suspicious if one has 100 debit cards in his pockets? You say you will just walk through all security with all these cards and no one will question it?

hmmm, I would really like to be a fly on the wall when you do that

 

[hernanday]

I think you and your friend kinda exaggerate the scale of the problem. Nobody gives 2 fucks about how many cards you are moving through the border, because as long as you keep your money in a bank, the government guys have different leverages on it - way more efficient than catching you with cards in the airport. Conversely, when you have your money in cash, basically nobody besides you can control it and the government guys certainly do not like this state of affairs. Thus the 10K restriction on cash transportation.

In addition to what admin said, the problem is if you get stopped/searched. 100 credit cards to any border official/cop = credit scammers/skimmer. If you don't get stopped/searched then you could walk through with 2 hockey bags full of cocaine. But eventually you will get stopped and searched. What are you going to do with these 100 cards, put them in like 5 different wallets. Then it starts off as why do you have 5 wallets for 1 person. Where are you going to store these 5 wallets when travelling. Most of the credit cards these days have chips = metal, so it is not passing through there but instead the bins at the airport. I don't think you'll get caught every time, but sooner or later you are going to run into a nosy guard who finds the 1 guy with the 5 wallets to be suspicious and search/ask questions.

At least if your prepaid cards get seized you can cancel them and report them as stolen. If your cash gets seized you're fucked. They will lie and make every excuse to not return it. And I just read Australia is essentially trying to ban cash.

You are right, the government doesn't like that state of affairs, the police are pressuring government to clamp down on cash. Even in BC, we saw the police pressure the government to ban people from bringing in duffel bags of cash into casinos to them changing the law to stop this, despite casinos fighting the legislation.

 

[JohnLocke]

At least if your prepaid cards get seized you can cancel them and report them as stolen. If your cash gets seized you're fucked. They will lie and make every excuse to not return it. And I just read Australia is essentially trying to ban cash.

But if you are in the airport and they already blocked the card by the bank or EMI you can't do anything so you will still be "fucked" as you say

 

[hernanday]

But if you are in the airport and they already blocked the card by the bank or EMI you can't do anything so you will still be "fucked" as you say

If that occurs, I certainly agree.