BAGHDAD, 25 September 2003 — The word on the streets of Baghdad is that half the money anyone has in their pocket is fake, so police are stepping up efforts to root out counterfeit printing presses before a new dinar goes in circulation. US Sgt. John Marshall said yesterday that more than 20 billion forged Iraqi dinars (more than $10 million) had been confiscated in raids by Iraqi police and US authorities here last week.
Six people were arrested in the raids that led to the confiscation of money printers, machines to print numbers on bills and false printing plates as well as stacks of the forged Iraqi dinars.
In Baghdad, coalition troops already engaged in collecting arms and hunting for looted art treasures have added a third task to their workload: a crackdown on counterfeiters before the new dinar comes on stream on Oct. 15.
Iraqi police Col. Safa Adeen Mahdi Salih said that some of the suspects arrested in the latest raids were forging the bills in their own houses and the rest used poor quality printers. “Some of the printing machines were stolen from the central bank last April (when Baghdad fell to US forces) and others brought in from the United Arab Emirates,” Salih said.
He said the volume of false notes has been steadily increasing since the end of the US-led war on Iraq and counterfeits now represent half of the total bills in circulation. The colonel said police were constantly receiving tips about counterfeiting operations that help them plan their raids. Piled up in a small warehouse in the Al-Qanot police stations, millions of false notes are slated to be burned in the coming days before they can be turned in for new banknotes.
Alkifah Street in the heart of Baghdad, not far from the central bank, is where most of the money dealers congregate, and where police have seized large stocks of false notes and printing presses in recent weeks.
Here it is clear that the rate you will get for your dinars embossed with the smiling visage of Saddam Hussein depends on how much you want to exchange and the mood of the dealer. “In this city, everybody does what they want. There is no law, there are no exchange rates and the bills are easily forged,” said Munib Al-Sikuti, an official of the Bank of Baghdad, one of the few private banks here.
