Sweden threatened by shadow economy

Stockholm

SWEDES rarely use cash, but building firm owner Piotr cannot get enough of the stuff. Every week, he spends hours racing from ATM to ATM using four credit cards to withdraw up to 80,000 kronor (S$12,575). He needs the cash, he says, to pay the undocumented immigrant workers whom he employs.

"They come here with just a suitcase and need to provide for their families from day one," said Piotr, who declined to have his full name published because some of his cash-only payments are illegal.

"By the time the system has processed them, they would already be broke. I can give them a job straight away when no one else cares."

Piotr has an ever larger pool to choose from. A record 163,000 asylum seekers arrived in Sweden in 2015, along with thousands of migrant workers mainly from eastern Europe w…