The statement by a US official this week that $134bn of Treasury bills seized in Italy earlier this month are fake has only raised more questions in a case that, as one commentator noted earlier this week, is a plot “better suited for a John LeCarre novel”.
Now, the plot thickens - like a lumpy and rather unappetising stew - with an FT report on Friday that Italian and US secret services working together concluded the bills and and accompanying documents are “most probably” counterfeited, and most likely the handiwork of the Italian Mafia.
So are we now looking at the prospect of a Japanese-Italian organised crime connection with the audacity to counterfeit - and undoubtedly cash in - enough Treasury billls to buy several developing countries?
The bills were seized more than two weeks ago, when two “Japanese” men in their 50s on a slow train from Italy to Switzerland said they had nothing to declare at the frontier point of Chiasso. But in a false bottom of one of their suitcases, Italian customs officials discovered a staggering $134bn in US Treasury bills.
In another twist, as FT Alphaville noted on Thursday, it seems the Italian police released the two men some time ago, as they had done nothing to break Italian law - having not attempted to cash in the Treasury certificates. This small - but significant - fact was revealed early this week in the Japanese media, although it has just surfaced in western media reports.
Whether the men are really Japanese, as their passports declare, is not entirely clear. The Japanese government is not falling over itself to publicly confirm their nationality, with a foreign ministry spokesman on Thursday saying only that Italian authorities had confirmed that two men carrying Japanese passports had been questioned but that Tokyo had not been informed of their names or current whereabouts.
Few details have been revealed beyond a June 4 statement by the Italian finance police announcing the seizure of 249 US Treasury bills, each of $500m, and 10 “Kennedy” bonds, used as inter-government payments, of $1bn each. The men were apparently tailed by the Italian authorities.
Related links:
Italian Mafia cashes in on fake T-bills - FT
US says Treasury bonds seized in Italy are fake - Bloomberg
Is the mafia behind the huge haul of probably phony bonds in Italy? - Clusterstock
US Treasury says $134bn of Treasury bonds seized in Italy are fake, or are they? - FT Alphaville
