Have you seen this in the news? I still don’t understand it completely. Why did Schwarzenegger have to declare the luxury watch. I travel to Europe quite often and I’m never asked to declare anything. Only when I am coming back to America. I don’t think Germany allows for dual citizenship unless that law changed.
Maybe this is because he was going to Auction off the watch in Austria, so then it goes from being a “personal watch” for himself to “selling goods” for profit? So, he had to declare it at the first point of entry into the EU? Someone must have alerted Customs to this.
He had to pay hefty fines: $38,000, including $4,000 tax value and approximately $5,000 penalty. The comedy in this, is that Custom’s credit card machine was not working. So, they brought Schwarzenegger to a bank, which was closed and he could not withdraw enough money due to withdrawal limits.
Curious, the value of the watch was $30,000, so he was paying more than the watch was worth? But then he was going to Auction it starting at 50,000 euros.
Luckily, Schwarzenegger had good humor. His mind immediately went to — GREAT COP MOVIE!
It would be funny to see a movie made out of this situation, with him as the main actor!! Did you know he is 76 years old now. Wow, getting close to 80.
Here is the YouTube video from the Today show.
Great movie idea. I’d go see it!
Brilliant Viewpoint 
This will clearly be a movie
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😉👍
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I can’t believe Arnold Schwarzenegger was temporarily detained at Munich Airport for failing to declare a valuable luxury watch. I know that when going through customs control, you must declare certain goods; in other words, you must submit a customs declaration not intended for your personal use. You also have to declare large summs of money.
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The issue is they don’t give you the paper to declare things on the plane anymore.
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This could be a whole series of episodes. I’m surprised that someone didn’t warn him of this beforehand – one of his advisors, someone at the charity … It does seem excessive.
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Well, lately when we travel, they don’t give us a paper to hand to customs. Remember we used to fill out if we had any goods. Now, we just head to customs there or here, they rarely check bags. I think someone must have tipped them off. LOL – stop the guy in sunglasses. He’s the TERMINATOR!
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I love random stories like this. I didn’t watch the video but I wonder why someone of Arnold’s fame and fortune would want to sell a wristwatch. I haven’t traveled outside of the country enough to fully understand the whole “declare” requirement. Like you I just fill out the forms and nobody seems to care what I bring or take. And I’ve hardly ever taken advantage of duty-free shopping. Guess I need to have something more expensive in my possession for an adventure like this one, huh?
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Probably the issue was that he was donating the watch to raise money. Someone must have tipped Customs off. How would they have known.
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Ha. I agree someone knew this was coming or he gave them that information during questioning 😛
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