Russian forgers prefer roubles to dollars, officials say

Channel One TV, Moscow
7 Jun 05

[Presenter] The number of crimes related to production of counterfeit
money has doubled in Russia. These data were made public by Interior
Ministry officials today. Interestingly, lately criminals have been
forging mostly roubles rather than dollars. Vyacheslav Guz has further
details.

[Correspondent] This police footage shows officers from the Stavropol
Territory directorate for combating economic crime detaining a citizen
of Azerbaijan who was trying to sell 10 counterfeit 100-dollar
banknotes.

Another operation was carried out in Samara. The local police were
approached by dozens of people who had replied to ads in newspapers
offering to buy mobile phones. They were paid in counterfeit
dollars. The police managed to find the printing press: it was traced
to Dagestan. Five residents of the republic had printed 400,000
dollars on a printing press made in South Korea. In addition to money,
arms and explosives were seized from them.

[Yuriy Samofalov, acting deputy head of the Russian Interior
Ministry’s economic security department] Several of the detained
individuals were previously on police record in connection with
investigation into various acts of terrorism. A criminal investigation
has begun. The forgers have been arrested.

[Correspondent] The Interior Ministry says that over the last five
years the number of crimes linked to banknote forgery has doubled. If
previously forgers concentrated largely on dollars, today the larger
part of counterfeit money is roubles. The most popular notes are the
R100, R500 and R1,000 ones.

[Sergey Skvortsov, head of section in the Russian Interior Ministry’s
economic security department] Citizens of Armenia specialize in
Russian roubles. Such is the statistics. I am not trying to say that
all of them make [Russian roubles], but statistics show that citizens
of Armenia are very [changes tack] Maybe they feel a special fondness
to this topic: R500 and R1,000 banknotes.

[Correspondent] A young man of 18 to 20 years of age; mainly a school,
polytechnic or even a university student – this is what an average
forger looks like, as statistics suggest.

The quality of counterfeit money has significantly improved in recent
years. That is why in order not to be fooled, one has to pay attention
to everything in a banknote: the paper, colour reproduction,
watermarks, embedded fibres. In a US dollar a lot can be drawn from
the president’s face.

[Vladimir Kuznetsov, deputy head of section in the Russian Interior
Ministry’s expert and criminology centre] Here, an individual’s
controls work on an almost physiological level. People are used to,
say, seeing the same face with the same expression on it. It is like
when you come home from work and looking at your family’s faces you
can immediately tell if anything happened to then, who got a bad mark
at school and so on.

[Correspondent] Some R20m, 5m dollars and 700,000 euros were removed
from circulation by officers of the economic security department last
year alone. Experts say that given the size of our country, these
figures are not too bad.

There is only one piece of advice for those who don’t want to be
fooled: be attentive. Incidentally, the larger part of counterfeit
money is detected without the use of any special equipment or
expensive devices but simply by touch – by members of the general
public.

[Video shows the officials speaking at a news conference; police
footage of seized counterfeit money, still pictures of a seized
printing press, arms; c/r 0901-1105]