How the money crossed: couriers, banknotes and compensation

A long and porous border

The border between Italy and the Canton of Ticino forms part of the Swiss–Italian border of 744 km, the longest border of both countries. It runs from the high Alps at the head of the Val Bedretto round the Lago Maggiore and the Lago di Lugano to the mountains east of Bellinzona, through mountains, valleys, lakes and the dense suburbs of the Mendrisiotto.¹ Its main road crossings in the period were Chiasso–Ponte Chiasso and Chiasso–Brogeda on the axis to Como and Milan, Stabio–Gaggiolo on the road to Varese, Ponte Tresa on the river between Lake Lugano and Lago Maggiore, and Gandria and Oria on the lake shore. The railway crossed at Chiasso, where the international station and the free port opened in 1925 had made the town a centre of forwarding agents and customs brokers.² Dozens of secondary crossings, footpaths and lake routes completed the picture. Chapter A.IV describes the long tradition of smuggling in the Lombard–Ticinese borderland. After 1945 the traffic in cigarettes, coffee, sugar, rice and salt flourished as it had during the war.³ In Italian the smuggler who carried his load on his back in a woven basket, the bricolla, was called a spallone, from spalla, shoulder.⁴

The spalloni of the post-war decades carried goods southwards into Italy, where Swiss cigarettes and coffee were cheaper than the products of the Italian State monopoly. The financial couriers of the 1950s and 1960s carried banknotes northwards. They took over the name and some of the habits of the goods smugglers, but their trade was different. A load of banknotes worth millions of lire weighed little, fitted into a briefcase, a hollow car door or a belt and could cross at a regular border post in a private car. The courier did not need mountain paths. He needed a car, a plausible reason to travel and a contact at a bank or exchange office in Chiasso or Lugano. Contemporary accounts from the Italian side describe the discovery of "several millions destined for a Swiss bank" hidden in vehicles at the crossings above Ponte Chiasso.⁵ The commission for this service, according to later descriptions of the trade, was in the order of two to three per cent of the sum carried.⁶

The anatomy of an operation

Berbenni has reconstructed, from documents of the Banca d'Italia, the typical sequence of an illegal capital export in the 1960s. In what he calls "Operation A", an Italian resident sells shares that he owns and pays the proceeds into an account in the name of a stockbroker (agente di cambio). The broker withdraws the amount in banknotes and hands them to a courier, who carries them to Switzerland. There the notes are bought by a Swiss bank, which credits the equivalent in francs to the client's account. The francs can then be reinvested in Italy through the Swiss bank, for example in certificates or securities held in the bank's name, so that the Italian investor reappears in his own country as a foreign investor. "Operation B" follows the same path to the purchase of francs but leaves the money in Switzerland, either in liquid form or invested abroad.⁷ The reconstruction shows three features of the system. First, the Italian financial intermediary was part of it, since the stockbroker converted securities into cash. Second, the physical border crossing was the only moment of risk. Third, the Swiss bank stood at the end of the chain and received banknotes, which it could convert or return to Italy through ordinary banking channels.

The Banca d'Italia's branch in Como drew the logical conclusion from the volume of Italian banknotes that came back from Switzerland. Its report observed that if, as appeared to be the case, a considerable share of these notes represented the proceeds of a large and systematic illegal export by residents, they must have been used on behalf of those residents to pay for smuggled goods or to make real estate or securities investments abroad.⁸ Berbenni regards the smuggling of cash as the main mechanism of capital export in the 1960s.⁹ It was simple, cheap and almost risk-free for the owner of the money, who never appeared at the border himself.

Notes

1. Wikipedia, "Italy–Switzerland border", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy %E2%80%93Switzerland_border (744 km, "the longest border of both Italy and of Switzerland"). Used as a last resort; the length of the Ticino section is not given there. ↩
2. Stefania Bianchi, "Chiasso", in HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/002230/ (lines to Lugano 1874 and Como 1876; international station; free port 1925; growth of the tertiary sector after 1950). ↩
3. BAZG, Benvenuti al Confine. Il Museo delle Dogane Svizzero (brochure, April 2017), https://www.bazg.admin.ch/dam/it/sd-web/KYDqZH4XOhDY/broschuere-schweizer-zollmuseum_it.pdf (smuggling at the Italian border "molto diffuso in tempo di guerra e nel dopoguerra", above all "sigarette, zucchero, caffè, riso e sale"). ↩
4. tio.ch, "Denaro, euro e informazioni: la Svizzera e gli spalloni", https://www.tio.ch/svizzera/attualita/1532020/denaro-euro-informazioni-svizzera-spalloni-rotte, quoting the Treccani definition: "colui che porta a spalla il carico di contrabbando", and describing the bricolla as a woven straw basket. ↩
5. VareseNews, "Ecco i miei eroi del contrabbando", 5 August 2007, https://www.varesenews.it/2007/08/ecco-i-miei-eroi-del-contrabbando/231991/ (accounts of a former maresciallo of the Guardia di Finanza on smuggling around Ponte Chiasso and the Bosco della Maiocca; "parecchi milioni destinati a una banca svizzera"). ↩
6. Wikipedia (Italian), "Spallone", https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spallone (commission of 2.5–3 per cent in cash; refers to Paolo Mondani, "La banca dei numeri uno", Report, Rai 3, 15 November 2009). The figure relates to the recent trade; it is cited as an order of magnitude only. ↩
7. Berbenni (as above), 336–337, Table 1 ("Operazione A" and "Operazione B"). ↩
8. Berbenni (as above), 337, quoting the Como branch of the Banca d'Italia on banknotes that represented "una larga e sistematica esportazione illegittima e clandestina da parte dei 'residenti'", used "a pagare merce contrabbandata ovvero ad eseguire investimenti immobiliari o mobiliari all'estero". ↩
9. Berbenni (as above), 335 ("contrabbando di denaro contante"). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.