Counterfeit banknotes
July 13, 2009
A statement released by the ECB said "a total of 413,000 counterfeit euro banknotes were withdrawn from circulation," in the first half of 2009.
It added that in the main, those bills originated from the same places as previously seized forgeries, meaning no new counterfeit sources had been found.
Although the increase is high, the European Central Bank also said it was important to consider the number of genuine banknotes - some 12.5 billion - in circulation during the same timeframe.
In Germany, the number of fakes rose in keeping with the overall figure, costing the economy 1.6 billion euros ($2.23 billion). But the Federal Bank said that was an improvement of some 100,000 euros over the last six months of 2008.
It attributed the drop to the fact that the majority of notes seized between January and June of 2009 were of relatively small denominations.
Twenty and fifty euro notes made up almost fifty percent of the total number largely recovered from across the 16 nations which use the common currency.
Earlier this month, police in Bulgaria and Poland made several arrests in connection with the production of conterfeit cash.
tkw/AFP/dpa/AP
Editor: Neil King