Algerian stolen banknotes sufficient to print 25,000 billion centimes

A total of 13 suspects appeared in court on Friday accused of making Algerian forged banknotes after stealing 19 tons of paper which as coming from Germany to the Bank of Algeria passing by the port of Marseille.

According to the Bank of Algeria’s lawyer Remi Chaine, the stolen paper is sufficient to make 2.5 billion Euros.

French police described the operation as “unprecedented” due to the large quantity of paper and the sophisticated printing machine used to manufacture the forged banknotes.

Sources say the accused network includes Algerians, Tunisians, French and Italians. They made 250,000 notes of 1,000 DZ.

The case goes back to 2006. The network targeted German cargos carrying 19 tons of banknotes for the Bank of Algeria in the port of Marseille.

According to Chaine, 40 rolls of Algerian dinar banknotes are still with the professional forgers who took a part of them out of France.

Two years after the operation, French police found out 51 million DZ of forged banknotes stored in the port of Marseille.

Earlier, a similar operation was discovered in Napoli where Italian mafia printed large quantities of forged banknotes of dinars.

In October 2009, French police arrested 14 men and seized a large number of bags filled with forged banknotes of 1,000 DZ and two rolls of banknotes in a secret printing shop.

The investigations were supervised by the judicial police led by Michel Neyret who had not been summoned yet to testify.

According to David Metaxas, lawyer of Michel Curt, 59, accused of being the network mastermind, Neyret obtained information about the operation in an illegal way.

The suspects are expected to be sentenced on December 21 to 30 years in prison.