Rs 500 Banknote: Counterfeiters' Favorite

[Bimat]

Rs 500 note, a favourite with counterfeiters

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:28:57 GMT | By Business Line

New Delhi: The Rs 500 note appears to be most preferred choice for counterfeiting. This is evident from the figures tabled in the Lok Sabha by the finance ministry.

The ministry informed the House that the cost of printing currency notes in the two Government presses varied.

According to information provided by the Reserve Bank of India, 4.35 lakh fake currency notes were detected in 2010-11. Of this, there were 2.46 lakh pieces of notes with Rs 500 denomination, valued at Rs 12.30 crore.

This information was given by minister of state of finance, Namo Narayan Meena, in a written reply. Fake currency of Rs 500 denomination rose to over three lakh, with a value of over Rs 15 crore, during 2011-12. That year, a total of 5.21 lakh counterfeit notes were detected.

Other than the RBI, various other banks also detected counterfeit currency. The total number of such pieces was 3.90 lakh in 2010-11, which rose to 4.83 lakh in 2011-12.

The finance ministry has claimed that it was working in tandem with the RBI, the home ministry, the CBI and various security and intelligence agencies to thwart illegal activities related to fake currency.

Source: MSN

[Figleaf]

The ministry informed the House that the cost of printing currency notes in the two Government presses varied.

Huh? One printing plant is more expensive than the other? Or printing a banknote of one value is more costly than printing a banknote of another value? Or printing on Mondays costs more than printing on Thursdays? Or does it mean "we don't know what it costs"?

Peter

[asm]

Huh? One printing plant is more expensive than the other?

It simply shold mean that the output delivered per employee of one plant is higher than the other..... or that one plant is over staffed while the other one needs more employees.....(to catch up with the cost of production of the more inefficient one).

Amit

[dheer]

Huh? One printing plant is more expensive than the other?

There are some press that are still old and use older equipment, this requires more manpower and the capacity to print is less and hence would cost more. The other press are have more modern automated equipment's.

[Coinsforever]

Huh? One printing plant is more expensive than the other? Or printing a banknote of one value is more costly than printing a banknote of another value? Or printing on Mondays costs more than printing on Thursdays? Or does it mean "we don't know what it costs"?

Well noticed , this is another way of manipulation and to ditch CAG -Controller & Auditor General of India who are  prime agency to conduct  audit .

Rs 500 note, a favourite with counterfeiters

The ministry informed the House that the cost of printing currency notes in the two Government presses varied.

Source: MSN

It simply means one press expenses are higher and cost cutting actions to be taken to align the expenses of both presses at same level.

It simply shold mean that the output delivered per employee of one plant is higher than the other..... or that one plant is over staffed while the other one needs more employees.....(to catch up with the cost of production of the more inefficient one).

We shouldn't forget how much these GOI officers wasting & spending tax payers citizens money for overseas travels which can be dealt through  e-mails /video conference etc.

A recent survey was published stating  most of the GOI staffs travel within country  through private airlines instead of national airlines which are economical as per statistics .

So major expenses are communications medium (Landline  MTNL phone bills , mobile bills)  , travels- domestic/abroad etc) definitely they are also enjoying  arrears & bonuses at end of fiscal year.

Cheers

[Bimat]

Huh? One printing plant is more expensive than the other? Or printing a banknote of one value is more costly than printing a banknote of another value? Or printing on Mondays costs more than printing on Thursdays? Or does it mean "we don't know what it costs"?

Peter,

Check this :

http://www.worldofcoins.eu/forum/index.php/topic,11691.0.html

Aditya

[Figleaf]

Since both plants are owned by the same company and produce the same thing, the difference in cost between plants must be write-offs. As the smaller plant was established in 1995, its write-off should be lower, since it presumably would have higher capacity machines. Instead, it is higher. Some financial hanky-panky may be going on here. One possibility I can think of is no write-offs for the old buildings and dividing the service cost of the buildings over both plants. Maybe someone doesn't like the second plant because that someone lost power when it came about and because the second plant was a benchmark to judge the efficiency of the old plant...

Since Indian banknotes require about the same amount of work and resources per note (highly similar variable cost), cost differences reflect fixed cost, suggesting that fixed cost are divided over denominations, rather than notes. More hanky-panky suspected. Maybe someone would hate it if printing of lower denomination notes were stopped, because that would make the budget for the old plant much smaller?

No wonder the minister wasn't clear.

Peter

[Bimat]

Mumbai is counterfeit capital of country

Hemali Chhapia, Mateen Hafeez & Sanjeev ShivadekarHemali Chhapia, Mateen Hafeez & Sanjeev Shivadekar, TNN | Aug 27, 2012, 05.49AM IST

MUMBAI: For several reasons, Mumbai is the financial capital of the country. But not everything is positive about it: hidden in that moniker is the fact that it is India's capital for phoney money. Delhi, on the other hand, comes a close second in the number of fake notes seized from its various dark alleys, but ranks number one when one puts a value to those notes, which really have no worth. In the last few years, the states of Maharashtra and Delhi have contributed to 30% of all counterfeit bills detected in circulation.

Information sought by RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal on fake currency bills reveals that Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal come next on the chart. Each year, the count of fake scrip netted by the police and the Reserve Bank of India rises. In the first six months of this year, about two million fake notes, making up over Rs 100 million, were seized. In all of 2011, about six million counterfeit notes, accounting for Rs 260 million, were seized.

RBI spokesperson Alpana Kilawala said counterfeit notes land up at the RBI from sources such as banks and individuals who come to exchange money. "But central banks all over the world try to stay ahead of forgers; introducing plastic notes is an effort in that direction."

But the battle against the business of duplicating bills seems to be a losing one. Security agencies say that the quality of fake notes is getting better by the day, which makes it even more difficult to detect them.

Counterfeiters use the very imported paper the government uses to print notes, the agencies say. "Around 95% of the features of new fake notes are similar to those of genuine notes. The quality of paper is the same, the colour and the ink are the same; counterfeiters are now trying to meticulously copy the micro-lettering ," said a police officer.

Maharashtra's security agencies believe that fake notes seized by them in April 2009 were printed in a government printing press in Quetta, Pakistan. Notes of the same series were detected in Uttar Pradesh, with the UP Special Task Force suspecting that most of those were printed in the security press at Malir Cantonment , Karachi, and three other presses in Pakistan.

That summation captures the mainstream opinion among economists and within the expert community that most of the fake currency is flowing in from across the border to destabilize India's economy. Former Mumbai police commissioner M N Singh said that while most of the currency lands up in metros, where the number of economic transactions is high, the notes initially land in tiny hamlets, where vigilance is low.

"The Bihar, UP and Kolkata routes are no longer used frequently. These have been replaced by Jharkhand. Peerpur village in Sahibganj district has emerged as a prime landing spot. It is 35km from the Bangladesh border ," said a police officer.

In November 2009, the Pydhonie police in Mumbai arrested six youths from Jharkhand and seized fake currency worth Rs 5 lakh. The notes were in denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. The accused would get a commission of 50% for circulating the fake currency. Each note bore a fake signature of former RBI governor Y V Reddy. In April 2010, the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) arrested six people and seized fake currency worth Rs 4 lakh. Again, the youths belonged to Jharkhand. In September last year, two youths were caught and they, too, were Jharkhand residents.

Innovation marks criminal enterprise

Mateen Hafeez & Sanjeev Shivadekar

MUMBAI: Circulating fake currency notes (FCNs) in India, as a form of financial terrorism, is kept alive by periodic changes in routes, hubs and modus operandi.

Once, the most notorious routes for smuggling fake currency into India were the Bangladesh-Kolkata (via the North 24 Parganas), Nepal-Gorakhpur and Nepal-Bihar routes. But now, Jharkhand's Sahibganj district has emerged as the main landing spot for fake notes sent from across the border.

Police sources said Birganj, the biggest town in Nepal's Terai region, was earlier the main transit point for almost all fake currency entering India, with the Pakistani embassy in Kathmandu suspected to be the nerve centre of the operation. It was suspected that a senior ISI officer working in the embassy's education department , K Mehmood, ran the network with the help of another ISI officer, Jamil Alam. Two other major routes were through Beherwa village and from Birganj to Biratnagar, all lying on the Indo-Nepalese border.

"Due to India and Nepal agreeing to fight the menace together , printers are now using Jharkhand as the transit point. There are allegations that the police in that state are lenient towards the accused," said a police officer from Mumbai.

The newest hub for the FCN racket that seems to be emerging is Maharashtra. "Last year, the state police arrested 105 people in connection with fake currency cases. A colour printer was seized during one of the raids in Beed district," home minister R R Patil told the legislative council earlier this year.

Joint commissioner of police (crime) Himanshu Roy admitted that fake currency cases were on the rise. But he attributed this to greater vigilance by the police and other law enforcing agencies. "Much of the fake currency is smuggled from across the border. Pakistan is a major player when it comes to pumping counterfeit notes into India. They are circulated especially in Mumbai and the other metro cities with the aim to destabilize the country's economy," he said.

Source: Times of India

[dheer]

The other innovative method employed is to give it out a foreign exchange to incomming toruist at a better rate ... quite a few fall for this trap and buy Indian currency before comming into to India ... the majority of them being students who always want few more rupees for their currency ..