Russian police officer studies a counterfeit 50.000 rouble note.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Russian Rubles Become More Popular Among Counterfeiters
Russian counterfeiters like to counterfeit Russian ruble the most. The U.S. dollar was always in second place. However, it recently started to give up the position, Konstantin Pirtskhalava Police General Major and Deputy Director of Economic Security of Interior Ministry, reported.
According to him, three years ago there was $6 to $8 million of counterfeited money confiscated per year. Right now this number fell down to $1.5 -$2 million.
For 10 months of 2005, Department of Economic Security of Interior Ministry solved over 34,000 criminal cases connected with counterfeiting and distribution of money. More than 1,300 people were charged with crime. Also, department officers revealed 93 groups of counterfeiters. They could be split on two major categories: North Caucus or International groups that make fake dollars, and groups from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, which counterfeit rubles.
The most popular among Russian banknotes are 100-ruble bills (32 percent of all counterfeited money) and 1,000–ruble bills (36 percent).
Pirtskhalava pointed out that age of counterfeiters is getting younger: currently about 80 percent of crooks are people between 16 and 30 years old.
Police General explained this tendency by the fact that young people have free access to Internet, where counterfeiters can download all necessary information and even concrete advices on how to produce counterfeited money.
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