Counterfeiting

History

The phenomenon probably as goes up far as the use of Monnaie in itself.

Counterfeiting was sometimes used by certain countries as an economic weapon to weaken enemy countries. The idea was to submerge the enemy economy with counterfeit money in order to cause a drop in the value of its currency.

It is what the Great Britain did during the war of American independence. The process was also used by the northerners during the American Civil War.

In 1926, a scandal of great width is started by the arrest with the Netherlands several people implied in a traffic of counterfeit bills of 1000 frank French. 10 franc million coming from Hungary is seized. The investigation of the Société of the Nations showed that the Hungarian government had supported this initiated operation three years before. The Germany and the Austria had also taken an active share in the conspiracy. The motive for the crime was double: to punish France for the territorial losses imposed at the time of the treated of Versailles in 1919 and to promote, thanks to the profits of the operation, a militarist Ideology, militant for the revision of the borders.

During the Second world war, the Nazis also assembled an operation aiming at counterfeiting the Pound sterling and the US Dollar: it is the Opération Bernhard.

In 2005, in particular pleading manufacture of false dollars of great quality, known as " superbillets" , by the North Korea, the the United States took financial sanctions in its opposition. The quantity of counterfeited dollars has tended nevertheless to decrease for several years, while the counterfeiters turn their attention towards the Euro.

Precautionary measures

Traditionally, the fight against the counterfeit of the banknotes is based on the inclusion of very fine details using impressions Taille-douce, making it possible nonexperts to easily recognize the counterfeit bills. On the coins, grooves are envisaged on the edges in order to show that the part was not cut down in order to recover part of the noble metal.

At the end of the XXe century, the technological advancements in the fields of the Photocopy and in data processing encouraged the national banks to use more sophisticated techniques, such inclusion of Hologramme S, micro impressions or wire of safety, the use of multicoloured inks or inks of optical impression (color varying according to the angle of incidence of the light) and the Constellation EURion (reason recognized by the software of image processing)

Repressive measurements

With the Middle Ages, counterfeiting is regarded as a Crime of lese-majesty. The culprits are condemned to be carried out by scalding. In France, the capital punishment continued to be applied to the false coiners convinced until 1832, date on which the punishment is transformed into relegation with the Bagne, with perpetuity.

In XXIe century, counterfeiting is classified in the Penal code French in the chapter of the crimes and offenses against the nation, the State and public peace.

False famous coiners

Frank Abagnale Jr.

Anecdote

Maurice Went, Nobel Prize of economy, compares the banks with false coiners: “ In its gasoline the creation of currency ex nihilo current by the banking system is identical… to the creation of currency by false coiners. Concretely, it leads to the same results. The only difference is that those which benefit from it are different. ” (in the World-wide crisis today)

See too

Information on the detection of counterfeit bills

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