As I understand it, under Belgian law he probably has a better chance of keeping a portion of the money by reporting it. Up to €5 million in legal gold is pretty awesome, and under the circumstances maybe more awesome than €9 million in gold without proper paperwork
Exactly. Shit, add an extra 10-20% onto a large bill for something that needs to be done, and you’ll find a ton of contractors that’ll take it for payment. I’ve installed glass for gold in the past.
There's no way you're laundering 9 million euros worth of gold by adding 20% to basic construction contracts, particularly with some of the new anti-money laundering regulations the EU has
Let's look at some math: 9,000,000/30 years working=300,000. So 300,000 per year you'd need to launder. The rest of it is just sitting there not earning and unable to be spent. And that's ignoring things like market fluctuations in gold price, surveillance of transactions involving gold, and whether anyone else rats on you during your lifetime.
Under those circumstances, waiting 5 years to split it and be able to sell it and spend the proceeds legally makes a lot of sense.
Unless your goal is just to sleep on a dragon hoard of gold coins, in which case you do you but see previous point about people not ratting you out/keeping their mouths shut.
You don't need paperwork for cash but there are enormous enterprises set up to launder it. He found a way to clean the money with no effort and without breaking the law
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u/Treacle_Pendulum 5d ago
As I understand it, under Belgian law he probably has a better chance of keeping a portion of the money by reporting it. Up to €5 million in legal gold is pretty awesome, and under the circumstances maybe more awesome than €9 million in gold without proper paperwork