Hawala or .........?

Each employee of our department is given a corporate credit card. Previously the card had infinite limit and there were instances when I had swapped close to 3.5 lacs on it without the card getting blocked. Last years economic turmoil had many companies implementing cost-cutting measure to save on revenue outflow. The infinite amount of corporate credit card was also affected as the yearly premium was a significant amount. The credit limit was lowered to just 2 lacs and we were not intimated about this change. I was to find it out later .....

My trip to Europe was scheduled exactly one day after I returned from my vacation. I had my flight reservations, travel insurance, forex, airport drop bookings credited to my card before I left for my vacation. The visa fees had been credit few days before. When I checked the amount due on my credit card, it had already reached 1 lac 40 thousand bucks. The payable by date was 22nd of next month and I was to return on 12th of next month. This gave me only a week's time to submit my receipts, get the reimbursement and pay it off to the credit card co.

On 11th morning, I was checking out of the hotel. The bill amounted to EUR 2000 and I handed my corporate credit card. The fellow at the reception swipped it .... not one but many times and finally said that the card was not getting accepted. I did have my personal cards but with credit limit as low as 40 thousand. Fortunately my director was also staying in the same hotel and I dialled his room explaining him the problem. He came down and settled the bill through his personal card.

After coming back, I promptly entered my trip in SAP and waited for reimbursement to land in my account. A week passed and the credit card co. laid a nice 4% late payment fee. This late payment further delayed my reimbursement as approvals were required from different levels. It took a month before the company wired the amount to my account.

The very next day I went to my local bank to enquire about international fund transfer. They requested for the certain details of the bank where the funds had to be transferred. It took me less than 30 min for completing the formalities and in next three days, my director got EUR 2000 transferred to his name.

Sunday morning, wifey sarcastically remarked as I had forgotten to withdraw money. I got an excuse to get out of the house for my daily dose of nicotine. Standing in front of the Wincor atm machine, I was surprized to find my account balance in excess of 5000 bucks !

Epilogue:
Is this hawala? Or loophole to make legitimate money? I leave it up to you to decide :)
The exchange rate between EUR and INR can be found at link: http://www.exchangerates.org.uk/EUR-INR-exchange-rate-history.html

Indian rupee stood at Rs. 63.2322 to a EUR on Friday 12 February 2010
http://www.exchangerates.org.uk/EUR-INR-12_02_2010-exchange-rate-history.html

Indian rupee stood at Rs. 60.7649 to a EUR on Thursday 25 March 2010
http://www.exchangerates.org.uk/EUR-INR-25_03_2010-exchange-rate-history.html

I booked expense of EUR 2000 in SAP on 12th Feb 2010 and the exchange rate taken was 63.2322. This got Rs. 126464.4 credited to my savings account. When I initiated international fund transfer, the exchange rate charged was 60.7649 due to which only Rs. 121529.8 got debited which left the savings account in excess of  Rs. 4934.6 !