That aside, the reasons are quite clear from the article:
"In an interview translated by his son, Kazazi said safety concerns prompted him to take cash on his trip, rather than wire the funds to a local bank.
“The crime [in Albania] is much worse than it is here,” he said. “Other people that have made large withdrawals [from Albanian banks] have had people intercept them and take their money. The exchange rates and fees are [also] excessive.”
Albanian contractors often prefer dollars and euros over the local currency, Kazazi said. For those reasons, he said, many expatriates who return to visit Albania bring large amounts of cash with them."
Folks from nations with fully functional banking and money systems don't understand this argument because they cannot envision what it means.
One potential way to think about this is to just replace cash in this situation with your favorite payment system - payment, debit & credit card and Apple / Samsung payment watch - whatever and imagine that you are in a world where i) cash does ALL the things that these systems do for you ii) these systems can, for some reason, easily have your money withdrawn from them and iii) for some reason, you get a huge discount for using cash instead of other payment systems (think the way you get cashback or purchase points from some cards)...
in this world, hard cash, especially US currency that comes with even more discount and flexibility benefits is worth the effort
but, all that aside, "because I want to" should be enough reason
Source: Wrote myself a check for a similar reason (not wanting to carry more than 10k across the border). Funds were held by the receiving bank for 15 business days.
Sounds like an organized crime problem, where bank tellers are tipping off criminals about good targets.
His solution was to take it out here, where it's safe...or so he thought.
Mistrust of banking institutions. Several countries have, at some point in history, frozen and/or confiscated the money deposited in bank accounts (my country, for instance, had one of these in the 90s).
> Or just writing yourself a cheque?
As mentioned on many other discussions here on HN, several countries don't use checks anymore. And even when that's not the case, it's probable that they won't accept checks from another country.
Good luck cashing in a cheque underwritten by a US Bank in Albania.
For this guy, that would be a year of savings, which is not insignificant.
Also banks will not commit to any specific total fee amount. If you read their terms and conditions, they say that money could go via unspecified number of intermediaries, where any one of them can take a part of the money up to 5% each or some such.
Failing to see an honest use case for moving that much cash by hand.