So this wealth manager and her boss had been summoned to a country outside of Europe by a client who was sending a private plane for them. She showed up at the Zurich airport with her boss waiting for this plane. And she discovered that she’d left her passport back home in a different purse. And she said to her boss, I’ve got to go home and get my passport because we’re leaving Europe. And he said don’t worry about it. And she said again, no, they’re going to check my passport. They won’t let me leave Switzerland, much less enter another country. I’ve got to go home. And he said, no, really, don’t worry about it.
So she didn’t say anything further, figuring, you know, it would be his problem if she got refused the right to leave. Sure enough, the private plane pulls up. They get on it. Nobody checks a passport. It lands in this other country outside Europe. Nobody checks a passport. They get into the private car sent by the client. They’re taken to the client’s home. They have their meeting. Private car takes them back to the private plane. Private plane flies them back to Switzerland. They get off the plane and go home. At no point has anyone encountered passport control or a customs agent.
And this wealth manager’s comment was the lives of the richest people in the world are so different from those of the rest of us, it’s almost literally unimaginable. National borders are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. The laws are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. It’s potentially very, very dangerous. And I think she’s right about that.