Hollywood legend and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was detained at the Munich Airport yesterday after a customs officer flagged a luxury watch he was wearing. Due to the cost of the watch, Schwarzenegger should have declared it while entering and exiting the company, according to customs. CBS News reports that Schwarzenegger was planning to auction the watch in Austria, in order to raise money for the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative, an environmental charity he oversees. According to CBS’s source, Schwarzenegger was never asked to declare the watch. Presumably he thought he did not have to do so, since he was wearing the watch in plain view.
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According to CBS, Schwarzenegger was detained for three hours at the airport. Most of that time was spent trying to figure out how to successfully pay the taxes, after a credit card machine failed.
Per CBS’s source, Schwarzenegger “tried to pay the taxes for the watch at the airport, but the credit card machine wasn’t working….Schwarzenegger was then brought to an ATM to withdraw money but the limit was too low, and then the bank was closed, so customs officers finally brought in a credit card machine that worked.”
The watch was apparently custom-made for Schwarzenegger by luxury Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet. A customs spokesperson indicated that Schwarzenegger was able to continue on his journey, but quipped “the watch will probably have to stay.” The CBS story says that a tax evasion investigation is ongoing, and that the total value of the watch will be determined once the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative completes its auction and reports the watch’s estimated value.
A case like this seems silly and annoying, but could signal a broader problem for A-list celebrities, who often receive extravagant gifts that are made even more valuable by virtue of their proximity to the celebrity in question. The ostensible value of a luxury watch is already pretty high, but when you consider that its value is pegged to the fact that it was designed for, and owned by Schwarzenegger (and in this case, set to be sold for charity, which tends to encourage people to spend a little extra), its valuation could get pretty difficult to accurately calculate.
Since 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate, the 76-year-old Schwarzenegger has been taking it relatively easy. Besides appearing in eight episodes of FUBAR, most of his work has been as a spokesperson for companies like BMW and Netflix, along with some voice work in Little Demon and Stan Lee’s Superhero Kindergarten.
