Strange movements in bank accounts are monitored by the Bank of Spain and the Spanish Treasury.
Withdrawing cash from a bank is a common action of Spanish citizens. More than a million operations are still carried out with cash. Such information the Bank of Spain presented on the third quarter of 2019. However, there is a limit when withdrawing money from the bank that customer should know.
Spanish banks inform the Bank of Spain and the Treasury when there are suspicious movements in the accounts, and one of these movements is to withdraw a lot of money in the same day.
Currently, the withdrawal limit is set at 3000 euros. So, any movement of higher cash will be registered with the Bank of Spain, which in turn will inform the Treasury. In these cases, the Tax Agency may request a justification for the withdrawal of the money.
Likewise, any operation with more than 1,000 euros could be analyzed by the Tax Agency. They could request a justification if the operation is suspected of money laundering according to “Tarjetas Online”. As web-site of the Bank of Spain says, operations in liquid money from the amount of 1000 euro will always require the identification of the bank’s client.
In addition, there is a special declaration known as model S1. It will be necessary for cash movements if they exceed 10,000 euros outside the national territory or 100,000 euros inside the country.
High fines for not justifying
Basically, the Tax Agency will ask the owner of the bank account to justify what the amount of cash is destined to. In case of not being able to justify it, sanctions may be applied.
Law 10/2019 of April, 28 against money laundering determines the penalties for income or movements of money without justification explained previously range between 60,000 and 150,000 euros.