It is a banknote that most of us never have in our hands.
We may barely know what color it is, and for our daily household it is more or less insignificant.
Still, no banknote can seem to create as much debate as the thousand kroner note – and arouse so many strong emotions.
Recently, Northern Jutland has been able to tell how the phasing out of the thousand-krone note, which will be invalid in just over a year, has led to a series of atypical payments around the country’s banks.
Take, for example, the elderly bank customer who, within a few days, deposited DKK 175,000 in thousand-krone notes. Or another customer who, in just one day in December, paid in 230,000 kroner with the same type of note – and explained that it was an inheritance from his parents.
The examples appear in the Money Laundering Secretariat’s latest quarterly report, and the suspicion is that social fraud, money laundering or black work are hidden behind the unusual payments.
After all, very few people inherit 230 thousand kroner notes from their parents.
Nord Jutland’s history of the unusual payments has created heated debate. The comment trail on Facebook is boiling. But it is not the suspicious bank customers that people get upset regarding.
Instead, the debate is swimming in outrage that you can no longer stock up on cash in the bank without being suspected of all sorts of things. What does it matter how many thousand kroner notes ordinary people have lying around – and where the notes come from?
It’s not a crime to have cash, is it?
No, it isn’t, and thankfully so.
For many Danes, this editorial writer included, banknotes in the wallet are as rare as a unicorn and coins something you associate with digging for gold in Fårup Sommerland.
But for quite a few others, cash is the preferred means of payment. A well-known and tangible sense of security in a hyper-digitalized world, where everything can eventually be done with a contactless movement or a swipe on the mobile phone.
Therefore, we must tread carefully and wisely when banknotes are buried or cash rules are changed.
Nevertheless, the string of examples from the Whitewashing Secretariat shows that the phasing out of the thousand-krone note makes good sense.
Because although not everyone who has large piles of thousand kroner notes has earned them dishonestly, it is a fact that the note is clearly the most used when criminals have laundered large sums of money.
They find it significantly more difficult when the note disappears.
At the same time, the phasing out of the note helps to complicate the significant amounts of illegal work that takes place, and which – despite the widespread attitude in this part of the country – is illegal.
Let’s be honest: there are very few good arguments for keeping the thousand kroner note. And quite a few good arguments for abolishing it – without anyone really missing it.
2024-03-26 06:38:16
#tread #carefully #wisely #putting #banknotes #grave
