Lusaka – An American and a Russian are on bail in Zambia after being arrested trying to fly out crates of undeclared Malawian kwacha in what authorities believe is part of a scam to use low-value bills to print more valuable currencies, authorities said on Thursday.
Zambia’s anti-money laundering unit is working with its Malawian counterparts to investigate the pair who were arrested around two weeks ago and are now on bail, Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC)spokesman Allan Tamba told AFP.
They were caught at Lusaka international airport with eight wooden boxes stacked with Malawian kwacha in denominations ranging from 20 (about one cent) to 5,000 (2.65 euro, 2.28 dollars), a DEC statement said.
The bills amounted to 42.1 million kwacha (22,440 euros, 24,328 dollars). Authorities also found smaller quantities of other low-value currencies including from Eswatini, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.
Malawi’s director of public prosecutions Masauko Chamkakala, who travelled to Zambia to investigate, told AFP that the kwacha was being loaded on a plane headed to California when police raided.
Most was in small bills of 20 and 50, he told AFP, with 1.5 million 20-kwacha notes counted.
“They claim that they sell the currencies online as antiques and collectibles but that does not make sense because of the volumes and the choice of the small notes,” he said.
The Malawi team believed the money was being smuggled out for paper on which it is printed.
“The security paper on which the currencies are printed is impossible to find, so we believe that they possess a technology where the printing is deleted and then a stronger currency printed over,” Chamkakala said.
“We think the 20s and 50s are in demand because they are the same size and colour as some of the global currencies. Actually, the 20 kwacha note is similar in size and colour coding to the 500 euros note while the 50 kwacha note looks pretty much like a 100 euro note. Other notes look much like Canadian dollar,” he said.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Pixabay
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