She emphasized that those with legal income have nothing to fear. If a person withdraws 10 000 euros in cash, the bank will “report this faster than you can imagine,” said Jaunzeme.
She explained that persons with legal income who, for example, withdraw cash and travel to a different country to buy a car, “has nothing to worry about. […] We are concerned with the operative information we have about criminal activities and criminal groups who use [large sums of] cash for other purposes than the purchase of a vehicle”.
She noted that the operative information at VID's disposal mostly concerns large sums of cash being brought across the border to pay “envelope wages”. “Until now, we had no right to inspect people on the spot and we also had to prove that source of the money was legal. Now, we have the opposite obligation,” said Jaunzeme.
According to the amendment to the law that comes into force on July 1, it is incumbent upon the person to prove the legal source of the money rather than VID.
