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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.

3 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Support by vjg · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is a bathroom bill I could get behind.

  2. Re: And nobody has asked by istartedi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Because he's an insider at the bank, working with his partners to test the bills. The insider was using the bank's counterfeit detection machinery to see which bills would work. These were detected, so he disposed of them.

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    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  3. Why by Framboise · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.