Slashdot Mirror
Flush With Cash: Swiss Toilets Mysteriously Stuffed With 500-Euro Bills (npr.org)
Someone in the Swiss city of Geneva has been trying to flush tens of thousands of euros down toilets. From a report: The bathrooms at a branch of the UBS bank in Geneva, as well as in three nearby restaurants, had pipes stuffed with 500-euro bills that had apparently been cut up with scissors and flushed down the toilets. The mysterious misplaced funds were first reported by a Swiss newspaper, and local authorities have confirmed the incident to multiple media outlets. Each individual bill is worth nearly $600. Collectively, the destroyed bank notes were worth tens of thousands of dollars. The Geneva Prosecutor's Office tells Bloomberg it has launched an investigation into the bathroom bills. Switzerland is not in the European Union, although it is entirely surrounded by EU member countries, and the nation's currency is the Swiss franc.
Or, you know - exactly 500 Euros?
#DeleteChrome
That greatly depends on the country. In Switzerland, 500 EUR banknotes are common, though not as much as 500 CHF banknotes (you can use those to pay for your morning bread). UBS has ATMs for different denominations in many agencies and airports. Here, for instance, the leftmost ATM only gives out 100 EUR banknotes.
There never was a "10'000 CHF" bill. 1'000 CHF is the largest one. Check here: https://www.snb.ch/en/iabout/c...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
EUR bills are made of plastic. When it burns, it gives a nasty smell and black smoke. It also shrivels and doesn't fully turn into ash, rather sticks to the underlying surface.
What should have been done was cut them into very, VERY small pieces using a document destroyer.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
According to the Tribune de GenÃve (local newspaper, in French) the reason for flushing money down the toilet is that some people from Spain had evaded state tax for years hiding money in the UBS bank, and since at the year end tax evasion will be disclosed by Swiss banks to EU countries, these people found nothing better to flush the bills down the toilets of the bank. As the toilets were soon unable to absorb so many bills, the women and one men (as found by cameras) went to nearby restaurants to continue their stupid procedure for destroying embarassing money. The bills have been checked by the police to be genuine.