Ukraine - UK money transfer problem

Bellx15

My wife is at this moment in Ukraine selling her late mother's house. We have a current account in the UK with Barclays. What is the best way to transfer our share of the house proceeds (about US$ 40,000) from Ukraine to UK?

One method is electronic transfer (wire), but there is a very strict limit in Ukraine on sending money abroad; $3,000 per transfer. This means many transfers and a lot of charges.

Another method is that my wife deposits the money into a chequing account in Ukraine, comes home with the cheque book, and writes out the full amount to herself. Barclays will then collect. Barclays say they charge 0.25% for this, but the Ukrainian banks are an unknown. Still, she is going to find out what they do charge.

Does anyone have any knowledge of how to do this properly, please? It surely can't be that difficult, but the staff at Barclays don't even seem to know where Ukraine is, let alone have any knowledge of how to get money from there.

Many thanks.

jonesMUFCforever

Will the Ukranian bank give her a bankers draft?
She still has the hassle of getting funds cleared and will have to pay for negotiation/collection but at least it will be out of the country.

Have you considered the Ukranian embassy in London? Contact them - they may have ideas of how to get the money out.
Abramovich doesn't seem to have had any problems getting his billions out!

Bellx15

Thanks for the suggestions. I think what I am really asking is whether either of the methods I have explained is going to be problematic in some way that we have not forseen. A banker's draft would just do the same job, I think, and perhaps be more expensive - but I'll get my wife to ask them.

Ukrainian Embassy - help us to take money out of the country?? - :rotfl:

But no, thank you again for the input.

jonesMUFCforever

I was being serious. They will know the ins and outs of the laws locally.

Bellx15

Well, here we are seven weeks on, and this is the sad and ludicrous situation:

My wife has been in Ukraine for seven weeks now, and just might finally sell the house tomorrow, before coming home on Saturday. She is utterly exhausted. Good news about the sale though. Or is it?

Ukrainian banks:

do not offer checking accounts and do not issue banker's drafts, to personal customers.

Nor do they facilitate international money transfers ('wires').

Can't believe it? Join the club.

So what are the options? It seems that the only way to get money out of the country legally as a 'private individual' is by way of a service like Western Union or Moneygram. As far as we can tell, this will be limited to $3,000 per day, so for a $35k transfer will take 12 transfers. No matter, we can be patient. But - it costs a lot of money. Whereas we would have been paying about £40 to cash a check via our British bank account, it will cost about $1000 to do it this way.

My wife is just at her wit's end with this. You cannot imagine what it is like over there when you are trying to conduct a rational procedure with this amount of money. I am telling her to just relax and accept that we have to pay the fees and go through the inconvenience. I don't suppose there is an easy way around this, but if anyone has any ideas -- please, be my guest. Time is running out.

Honestly, though what a bl@@dy country. My wife, who is an experienced businesswoman, says now that it has absolutely no chance of joing the EU when its affairs are in this sort of shambles. I believe her. The difficulties a country throws up when money is involved are all just thinly disguised forms of corruption.

jonesMUFCforever

Did you contact the Embassy at all?

Bellx15

To be honest, no I didn't. I looked at the website recently, but they don't even have an email address. Telephoning embassies, I have found over a long and tortuous experience of doing so, tends to be a complete waste of time. I did contact the British Embassy in Kiev, though, and all they could tell me was that the limit for taking cash out was $3,000.

jonesMUFCforever

Is there a reason why the currency you have is dollars when the currency of Russia is roubles?
Could this be a reason why the export limit is so low?

maninthestreet

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

Is there a reason why the currency you have is dollars when the currency of Russia is roubles?
Could this be a reason why the export limit is so low?

Ukraine isn't Russia, and their currency is the Hryvnia, not the Rouble.

Bellx15

Yes 'grivna', as it is pronounced. The reason for using US dollars is that all business is conducted in that currency in Ukraine. Secondly, the British bank have confirmed that they don't do grivna, so we would have needed dollars to work with them too.

As it turns out, the Ukrainians will apparently only send money abroad by Moneygram, so dollars rather than grivna is again the preferred (or only) currency to use.

Bellx15

Just as a follow-up for those who are interested -

I received a reply from the Ukrainian Embassy in London, which turned out to be useful, but not in our situation. It explained that you can go to a bank in Ukraine - the National bank - and fill in a form 01 to get permission to take larger amounts out of the country. I'm not sure what costs are involved, but there are bound to be some.

The reason why my wife couldn't use that method is that she has two 'identities'; one as a Ukrainian citizen, which she had to retain in order to inherit her mother's house, and the other British, which is on her passport. The banks will not accept that she, the British person, is the legal owner of the money, because she, the Ukrainian, inherited the house and sold it. Yes, she actually completed the sale - three days before her flight home!!

Anyway, for now the proceeds have been lodged in a current account belonging to my step-daughter. We can leave it there for now and consider at more leisure how to get it over here. Possibly by approaching the bank for permission.

Thanks everyone for your input.