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Italian police seize 6 trillion USD in fake bonds

18 February 2012 00:38 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Italian police on Friday said they had seized fake U.S. bonds worth six trillion U.S. dollars in Switzerland, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Eight people reportedly belonging to an "organization specialized in international financial transactions guaranteed by counterfeit U.S. bonds" were arrested throughout Italy on charges of international financial fraud.

The bonds worth more than twice the size of Italy’s debt, whose fakeness was certified by Federal Reserve and U.S. embassy experts in Rome, bore an issuance date of 1934.

They were stored in three counterfeit Federal Reserve security boxes in the Swiss city of Zurich, police said.

According to investigators, the bonds were probably destined to mega international scams, also being possible that the gang intended to sell them to the governments of emerging countries, or to banks and financial intermediaries.

The criminal organization, based in the southern Basilicata region, had "international contacts", police said also thanking Swiss authorities for their effective cooperation.

The first breakthrough in the case came in 2010, when police seized fake U.S.bonds worth 500 million U.S. dollars in the home of a person in Rome.