In these turbulent markets of the European debt, the U.S. Treasury arouse the envy of mafia networks. Italian justice has thus enter false vouchers worth 6,000 billion dollars in three closely guarded vaults in Switzerland.
The seizure follows an investigation launched on mafia clans in the area of Vulture-Melfese, in the Basilicata region (south), said the prosecutor of the court of the city, Giovanni Colangelo. The investigation to uncover "an international network of such securities with persons involved in many countries," said the magistrate. This is "the largest ever launched in this type of investigation." Eight people have so far been arrested in Italy.
Hong Kong to Zurich
According to the magistrate, the safes containing the good have been shipped from Hong Kong to Zurich in 2007. The network would have sought to place the fake title until last January, in emerging countries or banks. Experts from the U.S. central bank (Fed) and the U.S. Embassy in Rome, who examined these false titles, felt that much of them was of excellent quality counterfeits.
The other trick was to make good dating from 1934 and place them in safes, each holding an infringement of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. Control cases, network members could well justify the presence of this huge amount of money as part of financial exchanges between the powers that won World War.
"The operations of counterfeit securities, moving boxes from Hong Kong to Switzerland, traveling worldwide members of this network have a huge cost and we therefore believe that the interests behind this case are at a high level" , he said.
According to the prosecution of Potenza, other bills could still be hidden. Italy is also customary to the practice. In September 2009, the country's authorities had seized fake U.S. treasury bonds worth 116 billion dollars found in a package at the airport of Milan-Malpensa and arrested two Filipinos involved in this case. These fake bills were also dated 1934. In June of that year, the Italian financial police had arrested two Japanese on the border between Italy and Switzerland who had hidden in fake U.S. bonds totaling $ 134 billion, in the double bottom of a suitcase.
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