R1M Discretionary Allowance

Please tell me why this can not work? You go buy a cut diamond at cost. A legal, certified diamond, not anything skelm. I know of at least two places where you can buy a 0.25ct top quality diamond for 25% less than retail. So now you go buy a R10m diamond of that quality. I would guess that would be a 2ct diamond, set it in a ring and your wife wears it when you leave. Other side of the pond you go sell it. You will lose a bit in the sale, but having a De Beers certified diamond to sell, would that not get you more $$ than any other way? Dunno how much work and what % of your R10m SARS etc will take?
 
Lord Farquart said:
Please tell me why this can not work? You go buy a cut diamond at cost. A legal, certified diamond, not anything skelm. I know of at least two places where you can buy a 0.25ct top quality diamond for 25% less than retail. So now you go buy a R10m diamond of that quality. I would guess that would be a 2ct diamond, set it in a ring and your wife wears it when you leave. Other side of the pond you go sell it. You will lose a bit in the sale, but having a De Beers certified diamond to sell, would that not get you more $$ than any other way? Dunno how much work and what % of your R10m SARS etc will take?
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How many people realistically get back a good amount on what they spend on jewelry.
 
Lord Farquart said:
would that not get you more $$ than any other way? Dunno how much work and what % of your R10m SARS etc will take?
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Who knows? And the fact we don't know what % will get skimmed off along the way is a good reason to avoid trying this imo... at least with forex you can actually find out the bid/ask spreads!
 
DA-LION-619 said:
How many people realistically get back a good amount on what they spend on jewelry.
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True. Not talking about a jewelry diamond here. Only setting it cheap to look like a engagement ring. If you can get the diamond for 25% less than retail, what will you lose?
 
^^vampire^^ said:
Regardless of all that who wants to jump through hoops and fill out paperwork if you have yourself and another person who can take the cash with a far lesser effort. Just because you are emigrating doesn't mean you are getting tax clearance certs either. 99% percent of people who emigrate never get clearance as they either still have homes or other assets in the country, and SARS won't clear you until you last tax return is submitted, which in this case they would be unlikely to get clearance until the end of the year (after the tax season). Furthermore, from those that have gone through the process, they recommend not bothering because of how much work it is, unless you have substantial retirement benefits that you want to cash in now.

I haven't used exchange4free myself although going through the process of moving to Aus I have come across many many people who have, all of whom were very happy with the service and cost. I used Forex Capital myself and some people have used CashKows but as far as I am aware E4F is the cheapest.

I would not recommend going through a bank or similar. They are generally very unaware of the proper process (my brother tried ABSA and was messed around from pillar to post as they self admittedly said they are not sure of the process) and it cost far more than services that specialise in this type of work.
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Thanks, your post was most useful.

I'll go ahead with E4F.

There's no way I'd consider using a bank to move money like this, and seeing as I have no intention of broadcasting my emigration, I suspect the banks report such transactions.

I have used TransferWise and HiFX to move my savings from my HSBC UK account to my US Bank account, and it was much faster, better rates, and no fees, compared to the bank.
 
How do these companies facilitate moving huge sums of forex around if they aren't banks?
 
Lord Farquart said:
Please tell me why this can not work? You go buy a cut diamond at cost. A legal, certified diamond, not anything skelm. I know of at least two places where you can buy a 0.25ct top quality diamond for 25% less than retail. So now you go buy a R10m diamond of that quality. I would guess that would be a 2ct diamond, set it in a ring and your wife wears it when you leave. Other side of the pond you go sell it. You will lose a bit in the sale, but having a De Beers certified diamond to sell, would that not get you more $$ than any other way? Dunno how much work and what % of your R10m SARS etc will take?
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Why go through all the trouble and possibly be robbed in the process? No, one word, Bitcoin. Really if I was moving money I wouldn't be using any of the official channels except debit card. Our country should get out of the dark ages. There's no reason for these draconian exchange controls in a global economy.
 
Swa said:
Why go through all the trouble and possibly be robbed in the process? No, one word, Bitcoin. Really if I was moving money I wouldn't be using any of the official channels except debit card. Our country should get out of the dark ages. There's no reason for these draconian exchange controls in a global economy.
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Agreed.

I tried moving my money out of SA to my account up here via banks and then Paypal and no go. They want a SARS clearance form for every penny as well as intention on what you're investing it in... My request to transfer also got turned down because apparently I'm not allowed to send my own money to myself from an SA account to mine.

Guess I'll be using my SA credit card to pay for everything here from now on. E4F was an option, I'll keep looking into it.
 
^^vampire^^ said:
They have agreements with the banks and use them as vehicles to move the money in high quantities.
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How do they manage to reduce the fees so significantly if they are not essentially bypassing the banking system to move the money?

What facilities do they have that the banks don't?
 
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airborne said:
How do they manage to reduce the fees so significantly if they are not essentially bypassing the banking system to move the money?

What facilities do they have that the banks don't?
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They're not reducing the costs; the banks are raising them! Specialist companies have no special access to forex markets or payment facilities that banks don't have, but they might have brighter staff, faster software, more informed customers, and generally larger trades, so smaller overheads.
 
Tomtomtom said:
They're not reducing the costs; the banks are raising them! Specialist companies have no special access to forex markets or payment facilities that banks don't have, but they might have brighter staff, faster software, more informed customers, and generally larger trades, so smaller overheads.
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But the scale of economies and the enormous volumes involved you'd think the banks would at least be competitive with these forex guys?

Or is it the typical bank way of doing things where every service they offer subsidizes some other service hence charge the earth if you want the convenience of doing the forex transaction within the comfort of your home bank.
I just don't see the advantage though, forex is normally large sums so it's worth it using external forex traders?

Whats the risk for in using an external forex trader, whats to stop them running with your money to the Cayman Islands?
 
airborne said:
How do they manage to reduce the fees so significantly if they are not essentially bypassing the banking system to move the money?

What facilities do they have that the banks don't?
Click to expand...

When you say "reduce the fees so significantly" what do you mean? What are their fees on e.g. transferring R10m?
 
airborne said:
How do they manage to reduce the fees so significantly if they are not essentially bypassing the banking system to move the money?

What facilities do they have that the banks don't?
Click to expand...
They have money in both countries. If you deposit money in ZAR they pay USD from their bank account. If someone pays USD they pay out from the money you deposit. So it's essentially only local transactions. The same principle how Moneygram and WesternUnion works but that's for cash.
 
I have been looking at 3 Companies to help me with Investment/Retirement transfers. FinGlobal, Exchange for Free and Expatri8. It looks like Expatri8 are in the lead for my Retirement Funds and maybe a bank or Exchange for Free for my Investments. They both look the most cost effective.

Has anyone used Expatri8 before?
 
Lord Farquart said:
Please tell me why this can not work? You go buy a cut diamond at cost. A legal, certified diamond, not anything skelm. I know of at least two places where you can buy a 0.25ct top quality diamond for 25% less than retail. So now you go buy a R10m diamond of that quality. I would guess that would be a 2ct diamond, set it in a ring and your wife wears it when you leave. Other side of the pond you go sell it. You will lose a bit in the sale, but having a De Beers certified diamond to sell, would that not get you more $$ than any other way? Dunno how much work and what % of your R10m SARS etc will take?
Click to expand...

Do some research, read about the OECD and Common Reporting Standards. Unless you have already completely severed ties with South Africa (financial emigration), the deposit of that R10mil in any formal bank account will trigger a Reserve bank and exchange controls violation - that is jail term and/or 200% penalty/fines (even if you don't live here - your funds can be confiscated from any of the signatory countries' banks - and it is just about all of them that have signed, including UAE, Switzerland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Cayman Islands, even Panama).

Unless you keep the diamond as a diamond indefinitely, or convert it (illegally?) into cash, you are messing with anti-money-laundering laws/rules which are being heavily clamped down on worldwide. Don't kid yourself, the SA reserve bank, SARS and the rest of the world's financial institutions know exactly what is going on.

Not worth the risk to save on some admin.

SARS recently collected something like R30 billion via it's SVDP (voluntary exchange disclosure programme), because auditors/advisors have told their clients that they WILL be caught.
 
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