Day 252 - Easy Money

Image of currency by epSos.de, via Flickr.com

We had to change dollars for rubles through a bank at a legal rate of exchange. That rate changed every day, starting at the 400 rubles to the dollar on the day we arrived in Chisinau and increasing until it was more than 4,000 rubles to the dollar when Moldova introduced its own currency. We settled on changing currency once a week, on Thursdays so we would have cash for the weekend.

Each week, the Americans would pool the cash they wanted to change and one of the translators would call around to find out which bank had enough rubles on hand to exchange. There were many unofficial exchange houses, a gray market, where the rates were more advantageous to those with dollars. But we needed to follow the regulations in those areas where we could because operating in a cash only economy required that we request waivers to operate outside of the regulations in so many other areas.

Most of us didn't need to exchange many dollars, but each week we ended up going to a different bank. Even our small amounts translated into bulk. We always sent at least two people to make the exchange. Normally it took less than an hour.

One week, I was part of the team to go to the bank. On that occasion, it took quite a bit longer. I don't know if the translator who made the arrangements hadn't made clear the amount of money we needed to change, or if the person who responded that they could provide the cash didn't think it through. When we got to the office - it didn't seem like a bank, although there was vault - they were considerably short of the number of rubles we needed. Because they were short, we counted the bundles - mostly 50, 100, and 500 ruble bills - over and over again. We didn't break up the bundles. We just counted them. We had to wait while they called around to see where they could get the remainder we needed.

After nearly an hour, we all got into a car and headed to the center of town until we reached the bank itself. The remainder of the rubles were all 1, 5, and 10 ruble bill bundles. The bank officials had to stack them into boxes so the two of us could carry them all.

Two hours after we left the embassy, we were back with the rubles. Because we had so many stacks of small bills, I knew I had to split up the bundles so that no one got all the big bills and no one got all the small bills. But no matter how many times I separated the bundles into the piles, there was too much money. I pooled the bundles again and tried to remember how many of each size bundles we got at the first office and how many came from the bank. I made lists, totaled up the numbers, but there was still a 45,000 ruble difference. I had 45,000 rubles too many.

Finally, I realized the source of the problem. One of the bundles that we had counted as 50s was in fact 500s. The bills were old, well-worn. Given the number of times we counted and sorted the bundles, I still can't explain how we all missed the error. What I also can't explain is the reaction we got when we contacted the bank to arrange to give them back the 45,000. They didn't seem to want to hear about the problem or our willingness to solve it. They also didn't seem eager to collect the cash.

Less than a year later, Moldova introduced its own currency, the leu, lei for plural. By this time we had a functioning cashiering operation as well as a bank account for the transfer of funds from the U.S. Disbursing Office in Paris. Moldova had planned to introduce the leu as the equivalent of the Russian ruble, one leu for one ruble. But the exchange rate had inflated the dollar to the ruble so much and the Moldovans hadn't planned to print larger denomination bills. As a result, the leu was introduced at the exchange rate of 1,000 rubles with 4.35 leu to one U.S. dollar. The Moldovan leu exchange rate remained very stable, a measure of Moldova's success.