NEWSPAPER reports have it that the Bangladesh Bank has planned to release new currency notes worth Tk 90 billion during the holy month of Ramzan facing the Eid festival. But such occasions also bring the scope to fraudsters to circulate fake notes under the guise of the new notes. Police have arrested three members of a crime syndicate on Monday for producing and then putting into circulation fake notes. Such counterfeit currency notes inflate the money supply, besides hurting the people thereby directly affecting the economy. It exacerbates the loss in confidence of the people of the currency they use. Shocks caused by the unusual supply of fake currency also creates serious mismatches in the monetary policy. Counterfeiting currency notes is emerging as a big threat to the economy and public safety. Criminals in conjunction with a section of bank officials and law enforcers are reportedly running the racketing by cultivating an intensive network at the field level to put the notes in circulation. Reports said a huge quantity of fake notes is in circulation at variable denominations of Taka 100, 500, and Tk 1000 made in home run counterfeiting tools. A small part of it has so far been recovered while the remainder is still undetected making public transactions risky at all levels.
Speculations run high about the amount of fake notes now in circulation. It may be around Tk 100 crore in some estimates. Reports said the racketeers sell notes at 20 to 30 percent of their face values and their field level operators push them through transactions in the market or deposit them in the cover of standard notes in the bank counters. Surprisingly these notes even find their way to ATMs as banks replenish the reserves at the booths. The central bank recently put a full-page public notice in different newspapers detailing the difference between fake and real notes and ways to identify them. Commercial banks have also put in use counterfeit note detecting devices at bank counters. Officials have been trained for this. Even vendors are conscious of the fake notes to some extent as they verify a note looking at its security threads. But it appears that the safety measures are not enough. Money vendors in the city sell new currency notes to shoppers and other business houses specially before the Eid festivals. The intrusion of fake notes in the bundles sold by vendors of notes have already sent alarm signals spreading panic to buyers and sellers.
Experts believe that the practice is going to some extent be unabated as a nexus is at work involving people at high places in banks and law enforcing agencies. Moreover, arrested criminals manage to get bails using many loopholes in existing laws. We believe the law needs to be reinforced to nab the crimes at its source.