Billions in US bonds seized in smuggling operation
posted at 10:49 am on June 12, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Share on Facebook | regular view
For those who love a mystery, this story has more than one. Italian authorities seized more than $130 billion in bonds from two Japanese nationals as they presumably prepared to cross the border into Switzerland. No one can tell at the moment whether the bonds are genuine or counterfeit:
Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each.
Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones.
What caught the policemen’s attention were the billion dollar securities. Such a large denomination is not available in regular financial and banking markets. Only states handle such amounts of money.
First mystery: why has this gone almost completely unnoticed this week? Asia Times reported it first, and it was confirmed by the Italian news agency Adnkronos and Business Insider, the only American media outlet to take an interest so far. Adnkronos doesn’t include the story in its English-language service, however; I had to Babelfish the webpage to be sure it confirmed Asia Times. Wouldn’t the discovery of $134.5 billion in American bonds in a false bottom of a suitcase smuggled through Italy into Switzerland seem a bit newsworthy in the US?
Second mystery: Are the bonds real? If so, how did the two Japanese travelers get their hands on so much convertible cash? As the Asia Times report mentions, the denominations involved are usually used in state-to-state transactions. They would have had to steal them from a government — or perhaps a government gave them the bonds to convert in secret, covered by the Swiss insistence on secrecy in banking.
Third mystery: If the bonds are counterfeits, then how many more high-quality counterfeit US bonds are floating around Asia and Europe? Who is funding their creation, and why? Counterfeits on this scale would affect bond prices and weaken the dollar. North Korea has attempted low-rent counterfeiting of $100 bills, which the UN helped hide for a while, but this seems beyond their capabilities — and potentially a lot more destructive to the US. It would take quite a bit of support to counterfeit state-to-state bonds, almost certainly requiring some governmental involvement.
Hopefully, the press follows up on this case. I love a good mystery, but this one needs to get solved ASAP.
Update: Examiner blogger Craig Meister wonders whether the Japanese wanted to start dumping the dollar.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Comment pages: « Previous 1 2
Surely these bonds can be traced by serial numbers on the bonds.
Shhh. Obama might look bad. Let it go.
Knock, knock.. Acorn calling.
faol on June 12, 2009 at 1:18 PM
Bet these bond owners wish now they’d hired Sandy Berger.
petefrt on June 12, 2009 at 1:21 PM
Possibilities:
* China, Russia, Japan or possibly a very few others with that kind of money trying to unload without spooking the market? Or waging financial warfare?
* NK counterfeit?
* Hedge fund heist?
* Drug cartel?
Who else has this kind of money?
petefrt on June 12, 2009 at 1:37 PM
Interestingly enough, I got in an argument about this with my husband just this morning. I was telling him about all the news stories I’ve been reading that indicate an absolutely unprecedented power grab by this administration, and all the gloomy economic news on the horizon, and he got extremely frustrated. He said, “Why are you so focused on all these things you can’t do anything about, things that just upset you, when we have so much of our own stuff to worry about and stress over?” It upset me more than I can say that my own husband demonstrates how Obama is doing this. Obama is allowing/encouraging things to get worse so that we’re all too distracted and stressed out by trying to make ends meet to go out and work against him. At least my husband isn’t hoping that the government will save us from our troubles, but too many in the same boat are.
aero on June 12, 2009 at 1:44 PM
What is odd is that they flew through Italy… and were trying to smuggle this stuff…
When they could have, for this amount at stake, flown from whereever directly in Switzerland, bypassing any chance of Italy taxing, or seizeing these assets.
I smell IMF. They are about the only folks I know who would be that secretive, and incompentent, who would have this type of cash on hand.
Romeo13 on June 12, 2009 at 1:47 PM
IMF, as in International Monetary Fund? Really! Hadn’t thought of that.
In one financial manipulation scenario, the whole thing could have been staged, maybe with counterfeit stuff, so as to ensure they’d get caught, with a view toward temporarily spooking the auction/markets.
petefrt on June 12, 2009 at 1:53 PM
Who else has this kind of money?
petefrt on June 12, 2009 at 1:37 PM
ACORN.
faol on June 12, 2009 at 1:54 PM
It’s nothing more than a new Fed promotion. Buy 100 billion or more in 30 year bonds, get a free Uighur terrorist!
DngrMse on June 12, 2009 at 1:58 PM
That’s exactly how it works. Obama is destroying the economy on purpose. During that kind of massive crisis, people agree to almost anything just to make the pain go away.
Daggett on June 12, 2009 at 1:59 PM
Someone at FR suggested it was BO’s payoff to Switzerland for agreeing to take the Gitmo boyz.
Where is Sandy Burger when you need him?
petefrt on June 12, 2009 at 2:01 PM
Yep, BO is teaching us more about Alinsky politics than we ever wanted to know.
petefrt on June 12, 2009 at 2:02 PM
I agree with Craig Meister, most likely Japan wanted to dump the dollar without anyone knowing.
chicagojedi on June 12, 2009 at 2:05 PM
anyone find that briefcase I lost in Italy? It had some bonds in it.. If you get a hold of it please give it back to me! :)
offroadaz on June 12, 2009 at 2:08 PM
petefrt on June 12, 2009 at 1:37 PM
Anyone seen my wallet?
I think you are right that these are probably counterfiet, and it would not suprise me to find out it was N Korea. They have been making 100’s for years.
LincolntheHun on June 12, 2009 at 2:13 PM
It’s just a little contribution to ACORN, heading for an old mortuary in New Orleans. Pay no attention, happens every day. Gotta get ahead of the curve with that election fund for The One in ‘12, after all. I’m sure BOOOOOOSH is doing the same thing to help Palin.
Falconsword on June 12, 2009 at 2:14 PM
Pavlov’s dogs were extremely important to the development of the modern concept of the totalitarian state.
A lot of people think of that experiment just in terms of the conditioning. But that effect was pretty much always known – Pavlov was just studying it; he didn’t discover it. The revolutionary discovery he made was that when the dogs were put through a crisis (in that case, a flood in the kennel where they were being kept) it caused all of the dogs’ pre-existing conditioning to be “reset.” Then they could be easily re-trained completely from scratch.
This technique was then applied to humans, eventually on a mass scale, as a method of wiping out all previously held conventions so that new “programming” can be imposed on them anytime the ruling regime wishes.
logis on June 12, 2009 at 2:29 PM
Where did it come from and can we use it to evict Obama? That is the question.
j/k
This makes me feel really confident about spending our money on dinner out tonight.
Mommypundit on June 12, 2009 at 2:36 PM
Found in my junk email:
brynclarke on June 12, 2009 at 2:44 PM
Some interesting commentary at Atlas Shrugs, including this:
petefrt on June 12, 2009 at 3:00 PM
Does the name Ernst
SorosStavro Blofeld ring any bells?andycanuck on June 12, 2009 at 3:02 PM
I know it’s very difficult, but try to be patient with those of the weaker sex, like your husband and me. Just because we can get stuck in logic and pragmatism, doesn’t mean we don’t listen or care.
So, to show your little man that you appreciate him, do some very pragmatic things and feed him some well prepared and inexpensive food. Then after you’ve disarmed him, turn on the charm. And when you’ve exhausted him and reduced him to a puddle of mush, then talk about the 2010 elections.
Loxodonta on June 12, 2009 at 4:27 PM
If they’re real (probably not), then Italy should thank Japan for the enormous reduction in their national debt; seeing as how Italy’s law allows for a 40% fine in cases of large undeclared money transfers.
deesine on June 12, 2009 at 4:39 PM
Looks like we may have just found some of the money yanked out of the system on September 12, 2008.
You know, that event which started the whole “crisis” part of this plan.
Seriously, we know that half a trillion was converted from electronic form to hard currency and then promptly VANISHED on Sept. 12th. Where is that dough!
Sounds like some of it was sneaking into Switzerland to be laundered.
Jason Coleman on June 12, 2009 at 5:39 PM
Real is worse, of course. If they are counterfeit, then you just burn them and forget it.
Real means they will eventually have to be redeemed by our government. I don’t know the law in Italy, but in most US states, illegal property in possession of criminals becomes the property of the police agency that confiscated it (our drug war is financed primarily with drug lord cash and the auction of drug cars, boats and aircraft). That could mean that the Italian financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) are going to be very well-financed for the next few years.
More probable will be that the bond certificates bear serial numbers that will point to the original purchasers in US Treasury records. This will probably provide bloggers with another even hotter story.
I’d be FOIAing the hell out of treasury on who these bond certs were originally sold to…
(if they are not serialized and registered, then that is another good story…)
ElRonaldo on June 12, 2009 at 6:39 PM
Perhaps they were just making a deposit on behalf of Obama to his retirement plan?
coyoterex on June 12, 2009 at 7:44 PM
Look at this in the context of another story today:
Looks very much like Japan wanted to boost US Treasuries long enough to unload $130 billion of them.
MichelleO on June 12, 2009 at 10:50 PM
This is one of those situations where either version is equally unpalatable.
I’m partial to the version that says this is part of the missing 500 billion dollars from September last year. Which means, of course, that the Japanese are just as crooked as our government is.
platypus on June 13, 2009 at 12:36 AM
Does the U.S. Federal Reserve issue bonds? Ed?
Kralizec on June 13, 2009 at 12:55 AM
Bloomberg reports that Japan is not ready to confirm that the smugglers are bona fide citizens of Japan.
.
In a separate piece, Bloomberg also reports that the SEC is being consulted on the veracity of these bonds. It goes on to say that the $500 million denomination bonds show a highly suspicious 1934 issue date.
.
I wonder if these are North Korean operatives with forged passports and forged bonds. If they got over to Switzerland, how long would it take for the private bankers to stop laughing. $134 billion in 1934 bonds that remain outstanding?
Mark30339 on June 13, 2009 at 4:58 PM
I see cryptogon.com has the best update on the story.
Mark30339 on June 13, 2009 at 5:34 PM
Comment pages: « Previous 1 2