The Other Side of the Coin: Counterfeiting in Europe
Established in 2020 to support national law enforcement authorities in their efforts to fight financial and economic crimes and aid in international cooperation and information exchange, Europol’s European Financial and Economic Crime Centre (EFECC) has just released its first threat assessment on the matter.
Titled ‘The Other Side of the Coin: An Analysis of Financial and Economic Crime’, the European Financial and Economic Crime Threat Assessment 2023 provides an in-depth assessment of the threats posed by financial and economic crimes at the EU level.
‘Through this threat assessment, and our other analysis products, Europol wants to foster cooperation that will derail the world of criminal finances, intercept illicit profits, and – above all else – Make Europe Safer’, writes the Executive Director of Europol, Catherine De Bolle, in the report’s foreword.
Whilst mostly focussing on money laundering, illicit financial transfers, corruption and fraud – including the growing use of cryptocurrencies in criminal activity – a section of the report has been dedicated to currency counterfeiting within the eurozone.
According to the European Central Bank’s latest report on euro coin counterfeiting, published in October 2022, the total number of counterfeit euro coins removed from circulation in 2021 was 220,314, an increase of 4.7% compared to 2020. The figures included only the higher denomination coins – the 50 cent, €1 and €2 coins – with the latter comprising the majority of the counterfeits, at 88.6% (see CMN February 2023).
Although the number of counterfeit euro coins has increased in recent years, the EFECC’s new report notes that the threat of these counterfeits has decreased in the EU over the last couple of years, with the pandemic leading to an increase in the use of cashless payments 1.
The report mentions that counterfeiting activity in the EU is not solely restricted to euro currency, but also other local currencies in use by member states outside the euro area. The other currencies specifically mentioned are the Hungarian forint, Czech koruna, Croatian kuna [albeit now a member of the eurozone], Romanian leu, Swedish krona, Bulgarian lev, Polish zloty, and the Danish krone. These are typically produced and distributed at national and regional level. In addition, seizures in the EU have included counterfeit US dollars, British pounds and Russian rubles.
Currency counterfeiting activities are established both in EU and non-EU countries, as seen with the organised crime groups dismantled in both Romania and Spain in recent years. EFECC notes that criminal networks active in this specific crime area have a high- level of technical expertise and internal organisation, with opportunity driven connections existing between criminal networks, mainly for the supply of raw materials, but also for distribution to certain markets across borders.
Counterfeit Reports Rise in Kosovo
Although not a member of the eurozone, Kosovo uses the euro as its currency.
A recent report from Reuters suggests that there is now an increasing number of counterfeit €2 coins in circulation within the country 2. As mentioned earlier, the €2 coin is generally the euro coin most counterfeited.
According to law enforcement agencies, the number of counterfeit €2 coins in circulation ‘has seen a massive increase this year’. 486 cases relating to money forgery have been sent to prosecutors so far this year, with a total of 804 cases sent last year. Earlier this year, authorities arrested two people attempting to move 10,600 counterfeit €2 coins into the country from North Macedonia.
The article mentions that the increasing quality of the counterfeits has made it more difficult for cash users to decipher the difference between those coins that are legitimate and those that are fake. In Kosovo's capital, Pristina, its police forensic laboratory has examined more than 30,000 counterfeit versions of the coins in the first half of the year, in comparison to 4,451 coins during the same period last year.
1 - This is according to Europol’s European Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (EU SOCTA) 2021.
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