Greeks Offered Cash Boxes in Dublin as Ireland Spies Opportunity
What is a crisis in Greece is an opportunity for Seamus Fahy 1,700 miles away in Dublin.
Fahy is offering a 15 percent discount for Greeks who want to store cash and valuables at Cork Vaults, where 3,000 deposit boxes are protected underground in Dublin’s city center. He says he’s had about 20 Greek customers in recent months as concern mounted about how long the nation could stay in the euro region.
“If you lived in Athens, and had 200,000 euros, wouldn’t you try to get it out?” asks Fahy, a diamond dealer who opened the vaults in 2013, just off one of the city’s main Georgian-era squares, close to the Irish prime minister’s complex in Dublin.
Fahy may not be the only one benefiting from the woes of Greece, which on Monday imposed capital controls and shuttered banks as it prepares for a referendum that may risk its exit from the euro. The Greek turmoil provides Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s centrist coalition fodder in its election showdown within the year with Sinn Fein, Ireland’s version of Greece’s governing party, Syriza.
“Sinn Fein thought that Syriza could be a flagship for changing policies at an EU level,” said Niamh Hardiman, a professor of politics at University College Dublin. “That’s not happening.”
Read the whole article at Bloomberg
Stash the cash: Keep your money and valuables safe
Keeping valuables at home is an open invitation to burglars, so why not keep them in a secure vault. asks Mark Keenan.
A wealthy Dublin-based entrepreneur is heading off to see a hypnotist this week – to help him remember where he stashed a wad of tens of thousands of euro he had hidden in a “safe place” in his house.
Having hidden away several stacks of cash for a rainy day, he recently went to retrieve them and discovered he couldn’t account for that last hiden hole.
Household stash mishaps are becoming far more common among the super rich.
Last year the gardai recovered more than 200 grand concealed in the former home of developer Tom McFeely on Ailesbury Road in Dublin 4 (Mr McFeely has denied it is his). Whoever put it there, had certainly hidden it away, believing it to be safe.
Then there was the case of the Barnardos curtains in highbrow Dublin 6. Charity shop staff discovered thousands of euro sewn into a pair of curtains donated by a resident in the area. The money was returned to the embarrassed owner after the shop issued an appeal through the gardai.