From Bloomie:
Six Nigerian central bankers were charged with fraud in an 8 billion naira ($40.2 million) currency “scam”, according to the country’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
…Instead of destroying defaced local currency, the officials substituted it with newspaper cut into the size of naira notes, the EFCC said. The fraud was partly to blame for the failure of monetary policy to check inflationary pressure for years, according to the agency.
I wonder of those defaced notes were plastic. Recall that humble Guatemala also recently showed how it is done, from Reuters:
Guatemala’s central bank governor was arrested on Wednesday in a bribery probe that also targeted a former aide of President Otto Perez, who has faced mounting pressure since his vice president quit two weeks ago over a separate graft scandal.
The Guatemalan attorney general’s office said it had arrested central bank chief Julio Suarez, and issued an arrest warrant for Juan de Dios Rodriguez, Perez’s former personal secretary and head of the Guatemalan Social Security Institute.
The office said Suarez, who has a seat on the institute’s board, had been arrested along with 14 others over a $14.5 million medical services contract awarded by the institute. The charges include fraud, influence trafficking and charging illegal commission, prosecutors said.
Ivan Velasquez of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a United Nations-backed group working with prosecutor’s on the case, said investigations that began last year found that the contract was rigged in favor of a pharmaceutical company. “We have very coherent evidence to show that the members of the tendering board took illegal steps,” Velasquez said.
…President Perez said he welcomed the investigation.
“Nobody is above the law,” Perez said in a televised address. “I’m the first one to regret that these situations are occurring and the first to demand that justice is served.”
Yet, weirdly enough, Australia is still waiting for a transparent investigation its own central bank’s dodgy dealings vis it’s affiliate businesses. Indeed, the entire issue has been given concrete boots and let sink to the very bottom of the deepest abyss in Sydney Harbour.
