Xalimas.com
Police in Guinea-Bissau has this morning announced to have disbanded on March 13th an international network of money counterfeiters who had managed to inject a significant quantity of counterfeited euro banknotes in the country’s domestic market. The group was acting from a house in the Guinea Bissau eastern region of Bafata.
Three suspects believed to be the brains of the network were arrested and kept in custody. They include a Senegalese national, one Bissau-Guinean citizen and one European. The police operation enabled the security personnel to lay hand on a significant quantity of hi-tech computer equipment and accessories used to manufacture the counterfeit money.
A source in the investigation however disclosed that a record catch of fake notes worth 17 million Euros was made. Meanwhile, another quantity of counterfeit notes is yet being traced out by the Bissau Guinean investigators since much of the criminal currency is already circulating in the domestic market. The police however indicates that it will be very difficult to get hold of petty traders who trade the counterfeit notes.
Lucinda Barbosa Gomes Aukarié, Director General of Guinea Bissau’s Judicial Police on his part explained that the counterfeiters intended to take advantage of the beginning of the cashew nuts marketing season to sell their fake currency. While insisting on the dangers posed by such criminal activities for Guinea-Bissau’s national economy, Lucinda Barbosa Gomes Aukarié revealed that these last years, many counterfeit euro banknotes have often circulated on the domestic market whenever the cashew nuts campaign begins as more and more dubious actors get involve in the trade.
By Frederic Tendeng
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