Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

But why all this lying? I wouldnt say it is rental income. You dont want the tax office coming after you later.

If you dont want the risk of taking it out of the country then as jackytoo said use a currency broker in Spain or open up a sterling account with a Spanish bank

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

Cricketman, the problem is he does need to get it back to the UK as he no longer can get to Spain due to ill health.

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

money laundering is an offense in both countries, if this was money from a rental, then he should declare it too the spanish tax man... or the uk tax man.. so in fact this money is black money... i would be very careful....

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

Yes, good point. Forgot about the tax implications :)

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

kay, this is just 30 years of savings, nothing more sinister.

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

Then you or his friend in Spain can open up a sterling account with a bank in Spain, put the money in, then transfer it to his UK account.

Again, if the money has been lawfully accumulated then there is no problem. As long as he trusts his friends!

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

Cricketman, you seem sure that a simple explanation of accumulated savings is OK to put on the form? Opening an English account enables sterling to be paid in? Sorry but I have no experience with this which is why I am asking you good folks for advice.

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

You can put anything you like on the form, noone is going to stop you from paying the money into the account.

As I said before, these forms are to help spot money laundering. Nothing happens on the spot, but the authorities will look at the explanation and your transaction patterns and decide whether they need to investigate you for money laundering.

I cant say whether they will or not, but my educated guess is if they see one transaction under one persons name for accumulated savings for a relatively small amount of 25k, then they are not going to follow up the case. And if the transaction is completely legal then you have nothing to worry about anyway! As they say, you've got more chance of getting run over on the way to the bank :rofl:

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

Thanks, you made me laugh.

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

If you get stopped, any problems, just tell them cricketman said it was OK, they'll wave you straight through!:rofl:

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

Thanks, will remember this :lol:

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

Sadly, I think you do need to worry about any form filling nowadays, however innocent your intentions may be. Most forms are fed into computer systems and they all talk to each other and they often get it totally wrong. Computers don't have human traits, like common sense, and the internet is an unforgiving jungle.

I know someone (how else can you say it?) who specialists in advising banks and government departments on their security systems and he has not yet found a totally secure system, and it's not off-topic because what he has found, frequently, is that innocent details are passed around like confetti and when a bank states that transactions under (say) 5K won't be scrutinized, then that simply isn't true.

It seems ridiculous that we are discussing problems about getting £25K (the price of a Mondeo) from Spain to the UK, but that's the society we live in nowadays.

I was going to suggest changing it up with the many money changers in Benidorm, perhaps over a week or so, and then paying the lot into a Spanish bank account, saying that its for a house deposit, they would be happy with that, then changing your mind and transferring the lot to the UK electronically, but there would still be forms to sign. . .

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

I dont know where you guys get your info from, but really I dont know what you are worrying about. I have transferred similar quantities of money between accounts several times as have other people I know, it was always perfectly legal. If your intentions are good there is no problem! Otherwise how do you think anything ever got done!!

If a computer pulls you up, it will then go to a human to decide whether it is worth following up. Once I had my funds stopped for 40 days while somebody looked at the transaction, but then once they were happy it was legal, they let it pass.

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

Some people might not be able to survive for 40 days if their funds were stopped.

Re: Getting stirling from Spain to the UK
 

Between accounts is no problem, it has a paper trail. It is cash that is a problem and the initial opening of a bank account. If it's so easy why do you think all these Mayors were found to have so many euro hanging around the house. When I withdrew 26000 euro from a spanish account last year I was taken into an office and given a Bank of Spain form to fill in. Usual identification stuff NIE etc. One of the questions was "What is the Purpose of this cash withdrawal" I said (correctly) to pay for "work on the house".