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Fake banknotes (archive picture): deceptively real
Photo: Boris Roessler / dpa
Counterfeiters have had better times: The corona restrictions in retail and catering apparently pushed the counterfeit money further down in the first half of 2021.
Both in Germany and in Europe, the number of flowers seized fell, as the Deutsche Bundesbank announced in Frankfurt.
The amount of damage also decreased.
The police, retailers and banks withdrew 21,356 counterfeit euro banknotes from circulation in Germany in the first six months of the current year.
That was 13 percent less than in the second half of 2020. The damage shrank from a good 1.2 million euros at the time by 16 percent to just over a million euros.
Across Europe, the euro central banks registered a total of 167,000 counterfeit euro banknotes with a total value of 8 million euros in the first half of 2021.
The downward trend observed since the second half of 2019 thus continued.
According to the European Central Bank (ECB), there were 240,000 false bills in the first half of 2020, and 220,000 in the second half of 2020.
The damage caused by counterfeit money for all of Europe in 2020 totaled 21.5 million euros.
"The number of counterfeit money has fallen significantly," said Bundesbank board member Johannes Beermann.
»The reason for this was the corona restrictions.
The options for consumption were severely limited, especially in those areas in which cash plays an important role. "
With new security features, the monetary authorities have made the European common currency more forgery-proof in recent years.
For some time now, criminals have been relying more and more on counterfeit banknotes, which are offered on the Internet under the terms "movie money" or "prop copy" as play money or film props.
These drove the number of flowers up, especially on the 10-euro note and the 20-euro note.
With a share of around 41 percent of the total number of forgeries in Germany, the 20-euro note overtook the fifties in the first half of 2021.
mic / dpa-afx