[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

In Italy there is a very aggressive law against money laundering: if you withdraw more than 1k cash, it triggers a call to the police. I know it's the same if you do it over multiple days.

I think it has been relaxed a little bit later on, but in Italy everybody does the "I'll charge you X less without VAT" (which is 23% in Italy, I should point out), so this is also fighting that.

[wmf]

In other words, the Italian police are flooded with more reports than they could possibly investigate.

[rectang]

A great opportunity for selective enforcement!

[wmf]

Also parallel construction. "We caught him due to reports from his bank." (That's not how they caught him but those reports did exist.)

[wood_spirit]

Presumably the police computer system is told about the transfers automatically and it has no capacity problems. I know my own country has long had such a system and these days is almost entirely cashless.

[HDBaseT]

You mean they implemented laws under the guise of "money laundering".

They just want to track what you spend your money on, that's step one. Step two is to restrict what you can spend your money on, although this is a partial side effect of part 1.

[gobdovan]

You're onto something, but from some Romanian local investigations and public statements into similar cluster of laws [0], it's just something banks lobby for, so they can have more control and consolidate their place in any transaction chain. Maybe govt benefits a little, but when you see limited cash withdraws or commercial transactions requiring a bank system, it's usually private gains at play.

[0] (Romanian article) https://economedia.ro/parlamentarii-usr-au-depus-un-proiect-...

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Actually the privacy legislation in Italy is pretty strong. With the gdpr, banks have more challenges to do what they do with data in the US. Government might be tracking everybody, the goal of the law for sure is that.

It's hard to say what happens with all of that.

[margalabargala]

> Step two is to restrict what you can spend your money on

Where do people get these ideas? How do they sincerely hold them?

No non-religious government wants to restrict what you can spend your money on. They want to get a cut of your money, but otherwise it's strictly better for them if you spend as much of it as possible.

If they don't want you to have things, they just attack those things directly, like hard drugs or weapons. No need to restrict your ability to purchase.

[Cider9986]

>In July 2025, Visa and Mastercard pressured major digital storefronts Steam and Itch.io to delist thousands of adult and NSFW games.

[margalabargala]

Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Let's ignore the fact that that was done by private companies and not directly by a government.

The mechanism is to make it so undesirable objects are not available for sale. The above comment is implying these things would remain legitimately for sale as normal, but you would be unable to spend money on them.

[mike_hearn]

People get these ideas from the numerous examples of cases where it happens.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48338657

[Gigachad]

That wouldn't help in the situations described in the article. For example where individuals buy drugs with small amounts of cash, then that cash is used to buy things like luxury watches and iphones, then those items are taken overseas and sold.

Seemingly the only effective way to solve this would be to ban purchasing highly resellable items with cash and requiring that cash to be deposited in to the system first.

[tony69]

In Italy, it’s illegal to pay in cash anything over 5000 euros

[y-curious]

Ok, but 5 smurfs buying 5 €4999.99 watches is still €25k

[Gigachad]

Sure but presumably you could buy as many $4000 handbags and watches as you want. If it’s not being tracked it would be hard to pick up.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

You cannot have a transaction in cash of that size. Loundring is about converting the dirty cash back to normal money, but the idea is to force you to go through a bank

[BLKNSLVR]

Does that mean it's illegal, or that they'll just come knocking to investigate?

I wonder if the "it's my money, I can withdraw it if I want" argument is good enough to send them on their way? (in addition to $1,000 being such a small amount as to be less-than-trivial when it comes to the overall problem of money laundering).

[ExpertAdvisor01]

I think the limit is 10k and withdrawals over 1k get bundled. If you hit the limit you get reported to the Unità di Informazione Finanziaria (Financial intelligence unit) and what they do is under their discretion.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Oh so it was raised back to a higher amount

[iririririr]

withdrew 2-4k rent for a few months in 23 and never saw any cops.

[Tangurena2]

Italy has had some very widespread tax avoidance. Retailers have to use thing called "fiscal printers" to print receipts. These printers store data for the tax authorities to download. There are also fiscal police who would fine you (the customer) if they catch you coming out of a retail place with purchases and you can't show them a receipt.