Romanian police have opened an inquiry into an incident where a motorist threw an envelope to a driver in another vehicle. Huge wads of cash were found in the envelope.
Police were patrolling an area of Bucharest on Monday when they saw a motorist toss an envelope into another car. The second car immediately drove off after taking receiving the item.
Suspicious police drove after the second car and stopped it. They found more than 300,000 euros packed into the envelope. They separately found about 45,000 dollars in the car, News.ro quoted police as saying.
Both people involved in Monday’s incident have been identified, police said in a statement.
Police are investigating where the more than 300,000 euros and the approximately 45,000 dollars came from, they said.
Romania remains a cash-based society, even after joining the European Union and regularizing the banking system.
Some 78% of transactions are made with cash in Romania, the American Banker reported in March.
The country tops a list of top 10 cash-dependent countries across the globe, according to research from Merchant Machine. That is a U.K.-based organization that performed an in-depth study of each country’s payment methods from 2019 until early 2020, monitoring cash use and ATM placements.
