Send the whole lot by Banker's transfer in one go.
As everyone says, over US$ 10,000 and you have big problems explaining it away, the Customs have a bad habit of keeping it for you until you can prove it's legitimate.
It appears that at least some US states impose sales tax on sales of gold bullion and/or coins.
Gold bullion appears to be zero rated for VAT in the UK and probably the rest of the EU. But certain gold coins are subject to VAT.
Apparently in Switzerland VAT zero rating (the site cited implied exemption but zero rating is more probable) relates to "lingot de bourse": http://www.facile.ch/Article.aspx?Article=Lingot I leave it to others to research the Swiss rules on VAT and gold coins. As I understand it, typically in other countries old coins are zero rated whereas new coins such as krugerrands are taxable. http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/krugerrandinfo.html
For the rest: I have known cases where, perhaps in hope of a reward, persons seen buying or handling large amounts of banknotes or jewellery in Geneva and London (in the cases known to me) have been turned in to foreign customs authorities, perhaps by an employee of the bank or vendor. I saw, professionally, an exchange of telegrams between a customs attaché and the airport of destination as follows: a man had been seen carrying an attaché case full of gold jewellery in London, and the tipster rang the attaché at a London embassy. Customs at the destination airport wired back to their attaché to say that upon reaching the customs desk the man had identified himself as a jewellery courier and asked to be taken to a private room where he presented proper documents, with customs clearance to be handled later by a licensed customs broker. End of story.
The Customs desk at London City Airport is rarely manned, and I have noted a stack of forms left by departing passengers reporting possession of €10,000 (or equivalent) or more.
Two law cases come to mind: On the limits to forfeiture of unreported, but innocent, cash see United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321 (1997) http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/96-1487.ZO.html ; on its civil nature in the UK see Goldsmith v. Commissioner of Customs and Excise, [2001] 1 W.L.R. 1673 (Q.B.D.).
Is his name BCCI , by any chance???
Hawalas do this all the time, but not so much with OECD countries for which it would imply moneylaundering and/or tax evasion. See: United States v. Talebnejad, 342 F.Supp.2d 346 (D. Md. 2004); United States v. Uddin, 365 F.Supp.2d 825 (E.D. Mich. 2005). The recent cases are concerned with the financing of al-Qa'ida and terrorism since hawalas commonly deal with countries such as Sudan, Somalia, Yemen ...
BCCI was founded with 25% capital from Bank of America; they sold out around 1980. It was implicated in tax evasion: typically a Pakistani customer would deposit funds with interest paid gross, and a related borrower would borrow from BCCI with that deposit as collateral, the interest deducted as a business expense. Of course when BCCI was bankrupted the deposit was lost but the loan was claimed by the receivers. The Swiss BCCI subsidiary was solvent, and sold off to the Turkish group Cukorova.
Looks like a Newbie was looking around the Forum for interesting subjects and came across this old Thread. As far as I can see, everyone is 'giving advice' to a chap who hasn't logged on for two years. Perhaps he got caught carrying the money into this country and has spent the time since then in prison...
Hi Levy
Over the past ten years I have frequently wired in and out of Switzerland sums of money in the range you are indicating without undue delay or complication.
I agree with the person who says the best and safest way is to wire it.
Good luck!
Elise
You could disguise it as a 8kg gold chain... based on these prices http://www.discountgoldexchange.com/goldprice.html
No one would suspect.. unless you were not Greek.
CK
Nobody reads my posts.
I would suspect that anyone wanting to move 50-200K in USD through the airport without detection because they can't wait a week for it to be wire transferred is involved in some kind of, shall we say, 'non-standard commercial transaction'.
I give up.