Customs officials reportedly charge actor €35,000 after alleged failure to declare item intended for climate charity auction

Customs officials reportedly charge actor €35,000 after alleged failure to declare item intended for climate charity auction

Arnold Schwarzenegger was briefly held by customs officers at Munich airport on Wednesday after allegedly failing to declare a €26,000 (£22,000) Audemars Piguet watch the Terminator star was planning to sell at an auction in aid of his climate crisis charity.

The Austrian-born actor and former governor of California, 76, was stopped at the airport for about three hours upon arrival from Los Angeles, according to the German tabloid Bild, which quoted customs officials.

Schwarzenegger was taken aside by officers who searched his luggage and found the watch, which the actor had allegedly not declared on his arrivals customs form.

A spokesperson for the main customs office in Munich said: “We have initiated criminal tax proceedings. The watch should have been registered because it is an import.” We

  • Moghul@lemmy.world
    95·
    10 months ago

    offered to pay the charge with his credit card, but German customs rules require half of the charge to be paid in cash.

    What a stupid fucking law.

    He should’ve had that shit looked at though, especially being a public person.

    • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
      31·
      10 months ago

      requires half to be paid in cash

      Tell me you’re assisting with corruption without telling me you’re assisting with corruption.

      There is absolutely no reason to charge half as cash unless you want physical money to conveniently forget to report.

      Why do you think so many slightly shady businesses offer cash discounts? If your answer is “only card fees” then you may want to double check that last apple gift card you sent to grandma for her IRS bill actually made it to her.

      I don’t care if it’s John down the street or a major world government. Someone somewhere saw this and thought “ooh, more money we can accidentally misreport”

      Sure is a shame that the 17.5k never made it to it’s destination. That 15k could have come in handy. You never know when 10k could be useful for stopping terrorists that bring watches into the country. Hard to believe that 5k could be useful, but that 2k is going to be stretched as far as it can go.

      • geissi@feddit.de
        15·
        10 months ago

        First of, I couldn’t find anything to corroborate the experience existence of such a rule.
        The article might not be entirely accurate.

        But even if it were true, you think customs officials just take your money without giving you a receipt?
        And how would underreporting even work if the amount is exactly specified?

        “Yes, we fined him for 20k, he paid 10k by card and here are the other 8k in cash.”

        • EldritchFeminity
          6·
          10 months ago

          In the US, the way it works is that the cash part never makes it onto the report, though more commonly this happens when the police do a “no knock raid” on “the wrong house” and then empty the family safe. The contents of the safe simply never get reported as evidence or mysteriously disappear from the evidence room without being reported as missing, like a fairly decent portion of the drugs taken as evidence every year does.

          • geissi@feddit.deEnglish
            3·
            10 months ago

            In this hypothetical scenario, if he paid by card you’d already have evidence that he was fined and what 50% of the amount was.
            So the customs guys would have to bring in the same amount in cash. How would the cash part not make it into the report if there were a rule that there must be a cash part?

            And once that is deposited in the bank, nobody can just walk in and make some of it disappear.

            • EldritchFeminity
              3·
              10 months ago

              Yeah, after making that comment I realized the whole “customs gives you a receipt” thing, whereas the scenario I was talking about basically comes down to your word vs theirs, and what they write in their report. It’s a scenario with a lot less accountability than customs has.

    • geissi@feddit.deEnglish
      12·
      10 months ago

      but German customs rules require half of the charge to be paid in cash.

      What a stupid fucking law.

      Never heard of such a rule.
      Afaik the reason why he couldn’t pay with card was that the card reader was broken.

  • anonionfinelyminced@kbin.social
    22·
    10 months ago

    I seem to recall high end watches being a way to avoid carrying large amounts of cash across borders. Maybe even for money laundering (although that seems cumbersome).

    People can carry tens or hundreds of thousands across borders in their luggage as personal wardrobe accessories. Once they arrive at their destination, find a dealer who will buy a watch for cash and they have loads of local currency without paying bank transaction fees or getting government haircuts.

    Not that I think that’s what’s going on here, but it may be the media shining a spotlight on it for some reason.

  • Mrs_deWinter@feddit.de
    5·
    10 months ago

    I’d be more upset if the headline read “Arnold Schwarzenegger commited tax fraud but was let through because he’s famous”

  • sleepyTonia@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Is this a German thing? I’ve traveled many times between Canada and the USA and never had to fill any customs form.
    Edit: Boy oh boy. I thought Reddit was the toxic place, but can’t ask a damn question in here without getting slammed with downvotes?

    • whereisk@lemmy.world
      13·
      10 months ago

      Most countries dislike people registered as tourists carrying products intended for commerce. In this instance it was intended for auctioning even with the proceedings going to a charitable org but maybe the German law doesn’t make a distinction (it seems an edge case that possibly wouldn’t have been codified).

    • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
      6·
      10 months ago

      There’s a threshold for declaration at the US-Canada border too. Your odds of getting searched in a car at the canada-us border are low, though.