The Secret World Of Indian Currency Printers...absolutely amazing!
( Makes for very interesting reading. The plot thickens.This is like a crime thriller. Read on...)
by Shelley Kasli
The recent decision to discontinue the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes and
introduce the Rs 2000 notes was taken with a view to curbing financing
of terrorism through the proceeds of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN)
and use of such funds for subversive activities such as espionage,
smuggling of arms, drugs and other contrabands into India, and for
eliminating Black Money which casts a long shadow of parallel economy
on our real economy. However, are our new currency notes printed with
the involvement of the same blacklisted companies that in fact were the
source of fake notes to Pakistan in the first place?
RBI Rocked Parliament Shocked
Sometime during 2009-10 CBI raided some 70-odd branches of various
banks on the India-Nepal border from where counterfeit currency racket
was unearthed.The officials of these branches told CBI that they had
got these notes from RBI which led CBI to raid the vaults of RBI. What
CBI found in the vaults of RBI were huge cache of counterfeit Indian
currency lying in the denomination of 500 and 1000, the same
counterfeit currency smuggled by the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI
into India. The question was how did these fake currency land in the
vaults of RBI?
Later in 2010 the Committee on Public Undertakings (CPU), an Indian
Parliamentary committee was shocked to find out that the Government
had outsourced the printing of Rs 1 lakh crore of currency notes to
US, UK and Germany putting the "entire economic sovereignty (of the
country) at stake".
The 3 companies to whom the Indian currency printing was outsourced
are American Banknote Company (USA), Thomas De La Rue (UK) and
Giesecke and Devrient Consortium (Germany).
Following the scandal the Reserve Bank sent a senior official on a
fact-finding mission to De La Rue's printing plant in Hampshire, UK.
RBI which imports 95% of its security paper requirements and which is
believed to account for up to a third of De la Rue's profits excluded
De la Rue from new contracts. De La Rue was blacklisted by the
government with 2000 metric tonnes of its paper lying unused at
printing presses and godowns. It was a disaster and De la Rue's CEO
James Hussey who is the godson of the Queen of England herself quit
the company mysteriously. De la Rue's shares tanked and it almost went
bankrupt losing one of its most valuable customer – RBI. Its French
rival Oberthur approached De la Rue with a bid to takeover the company
which was fought back.
The complaints sent to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) by
'unnamed officers of the Ministry of Finance' mentioned other
companies too. These include French firm Arjo Wiggins, Crane AB of USA
and Louisenthal, Germany. However as recently as January 2015 the Home
Ministry barred the German company, Louisenthal, from selling bank
note paper to the RBI after it discovered that the firm was also
selling raw notes to Pakistan.
So who are these currency printers and how did they end up printing
currency notes for the Indian government? How did the company from
getting blacklisted to a point of bankruptcy rise to its feet and is
preparing to enter the Indian market again? Most importantly why is it
that the common Indian know nothing about it? Here is a brief story of
these Money Makers.
The Secret World of Money Makers
The high-security currency printing and technology business is
dominated by a few Western-European companies. In his book Money
Makers – The Secret World Of Banknote Printing author Klaus Bender
offers a detailed view of the banknote industry and its modus operandi
by removing the industry's carefully imposed shroud of secrecy. The
only previous attempt to reveal this story was published in 1983 by an
American author, Terry Bloom in his book "The Brotherhood of Money –
The Secret World of Banknote Printers". The entire edition of that
book was bought up – straight from the printing presses – by two
prominent representatives of the industry to prevent the public from
getting an inside view of the business.
The four major segments in the currency business are paper, printing
presses, note accessories, inks and lastly integrators who provide
total, end-to-end currency printing services. It is believed these
businesses are tightly run by not more than a dozen companies
operating out of Europe. These companies are believed to be operating
since the 15th century. De la Rue's history goes even further back to
the company's plant near Bath which has been a mill operating for
1,000 years.
De la Rue was the official Crown Agent of the British Empire who still
prints banknotes for the Bank of England. Crown Agents ran the
day-today affairs of the Empire. In his book Managing the British
Empire: The Crown Agents author David Sunderland explains how the
Crown Agents printed the stamps and banknotes of the colonies;
provided technical, engineering, and financial services; served as
private bankers to the colonial monetary authorities, government
officials, and heads of state; served as arms procurers,
quartermasters, and paymasters for the colonial armies. In effect,
Crown Agents administered the British Empire, which at one point in
the 19th Century, encompassed over 300 colonies and nominally
"independent countries" allied to the British Crown.
Later the Crown Agents' office was set up, under the supervision of
the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in 1831 to consolidate the
activities previously undertaken by a number of agents of varying
efficiency and probity. This was done to properly manage the budding
Industrial Revolution that destroyed the traditional Indian markets
and economy.
The first colony allowed to issue government notes was Mauritius,
which in 1849 began to distribute rupee notes. No other colony was
permitted to follow its lead until 1884. Colonies were required to
obtain notes from the Agents, who passed orders onto the printing firm
De la Rue.
As per official history the bank note printing in India started in
1928 with the establishment of India Security Press at Nashik by
Government of India. Until the commissioning of Nashik Press the
Indian Currency Notes were printed from Thomas De La Rue Giori of
United Kingdom.
Even after Independence, for 50 years, Free India printed its rupees
on machines bought from De La Rue Giori, run by the Swiss family Giori
and till recently said to control 90 per cent of the banknote printing
business. But than something happened at the closing of the 20th
century that changed everything.
The Hijacking Of Indian Airlines Flight 814
On 24 December 1999 Indian Airlines Flight 814 also known as IC 814
was hijacked by gunmen shortly after it entered Indian airspace.
Hijackers ordered the aircraft to be flown to several locations. After
touching down in Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai, the hijackers finally
forced the aircraft to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan, which at the
time was controlled by the Taliban. For those of you who are not aware
of the incident remember the Ajay Devgan starrer action thriller
Zameen, which was based on this incident.
What was not shown in the film however and what is not known to many
still is that there was a mystery man on that flight. His name is
Roberto Giori and he was the owner of De la Rue who controlled 90% of
the world's currency-printing business. The 50-year-old Giori, who
holds dual Swiss and Italian nationality, is one of Switzerland's
richest men. Switzerland sent a special envoy to the airport to deal
with the abduction of its currency king. It also put pressure on New
Delhi to come to a solution that ensured their safe release.
Two days after the hijack, on Sunday, 26 December, the Swiss Foreign
Minister, Mr. Joseph Deiss, had a long telephone conversation with his
Indian counterpart, Mr. Jaswant Singh, the Swiss press had reported.
The Swiss Government set up a separate cell in the capital Berne to
deal with the crisis and had sent special envoy, Mr. Hans Stalder, to
Kandahar who regularly reported back to Berne. According to the
Repubblica and Corriere Della Sera newspapers, ever since his return
to Switzerland by a special plane, Mr. Roberto Giori has been under
the protection of the Swiss Government.
But there is a very important missing piece to this story. It is
believed that a ransom was paid by the Indian Government for the safe
release of Roberto Giori; this issue has been voiced not just from
political sections but also from Intelligence. This issue is a hot
potato for both the Congress and BJP and is likely to boil parliament
in the near future.
Whatever be the case the motive for the hijacking was reported to be
to secure the release of terrorists held in Indian prisons. The
hostage crisis lasted for seven days and ended after India agreed to
release three militants – Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar Saeed
Sheikh and Maulana Masood Azhar. These militants have since been
implicated in other terrorist actions including the Mumbai terror
attacks.
While the release of terrorists maybe one of the motive for hijacking
the plane, there are bigger things at stake here than is usually
understood. Roberto Giori was not an ordinary man not even an ordinary
VVIP. He was the owner of the company that has been printing currency
notes for more than 150 countries since centuries. And it has a dark
history in each and every country that it operated in. We mention few
instances here for our readers to understand the gravity of the
situation and encourage you to study others.
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan President was starved of currency
before he was militarily overthrown. He was unable to pay his
soldiers. The contract for printing the banknotes was given to De La
Rue but they were not delivered until it was too late.
With the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of Soviet
Union, many newly independent countries sprang up overnight. One such
country was Chechnya (formerly part of the Soviet Union) who signed a
secret deal to print passports and banknotes with De la Rue. Two
brothers Ruslan and Nazerbeg Utsiev were sent to conclude the deal.
Apart from printing passports and banknotes they were also trying to
secure 2000 ground-to-air Stinger missiles from Britain, Russia's age
old arch-enemy. The KGB was tipped-off and soon two Armenian hitmen
were on their way from Los Angeles to kill both the brothers and the
deals. Both the brother were found dead soon after.
The brothers and the deals were dead but De la Rue survived. All was
well until in 2010 the Parliament Committee was rocked with the
scandal and De la Rue with other companies were blacklisted from
operating in India and almost went bankrupt. This brings us to the
recent demonetization move.
Is De la Rue involved in the printing of the new Rs 2000 notes?
As per a recent report by Economic Times,
[The notes]were largely printed at Mysuru under utmost secrecy while
the paper note on which the printing was done came from Italy, Germany
and London.
The printing, according to officials, began in August-September and
nearly 480 million notes of Rs 2,000 denomination and an equal number
of Rs 500 denomination were printed. The printing facility at
Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Ltd. (BRBNMPL) in Mysuru
under Reserve Bank of India was set up with the De La Rue Giori, now
KBA Giori, Switzerland.
The Hindu reported,
India imports bank note papers from European companies like
Louisenthal in Germany, De la Rue in United Kingdom, Crane in Sweden
and Arjo Wiggins in France and Netherlands.
India had blacklisted two European firms in 2014 amid reports by
security agencies that the security features, which come embossed on
bank note paper, were compromised and given away to Pakistan.
But the ban was lifted and the companies were removed from the
blacklist. Why? Here is the reason given for the lifting of the ban.
"These companies are in the business for 150 years? they will not
hamper their trade by passing on information of one country to
another. Some of these firms even print currency notes for smaller
countries. After the investigations, it was found that the two firms
had not compromised the security features and the ban was lifted,"
said the official.
However the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) of UK itself in their inquiry
had uncovered that a number of De la Rue employees had deliberately
falsified certain paper specification test certificates for some of
its 150 clients. Recently it was also revealed in the Panama Papers
that De la Rue paid out a 15% commission to a New Delhi businessman to
secure contracts from Reserve Bank of India. There are also reports
that De la Rue paid £40m in settlement to the RBI for issues in
production of paper notes.
Even so after all this it has been given clearance and there are even
plans in discussion with De la Rue for setting up of a security paper
mill and a research and development centre of identity software in
Madhya Pradesh. Martin Sutherland the new CEO of De la Rue in an
interview titled Giving Make in India the Currency to Succeed with
India Investment Journal said that under the UK-India Defence
International Security Partnership Agreement which was signed in
November 2015, De La Rue is committed to supporting both governments
on the subject of counterfeiting under this agreement.
However there has been no official announcement made regarding the
lifting of the ban on De la Rue and its removal from the blacklist
apart from the news report. De la Rue that almost went bankrupt after
losing RBI contracts reported a whopping 33.33% rise in its shares in
the last six months.
The question that still need to be answered is; are the new Indian
currency notes printed with the involvement of blacklisted Crown Agent
companies who supplied and were the source of fake notes for Pakistan
at the expense of India's National Security?
Note: In order to get answers to the above questions GreatGameIndia
has under the Right to Information Act filed RTIs to know the truth of
the matter in the service of the nation.
Posted by: Murli dhar Gupta <mdguptabpl@gmail.com>
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