Forged ‘Supernotes’ Found in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong South China Morning Post reported yesterday that Hong Kong police found and confiscated supernotes (counterfeit U.S. $100 bills) printed in North Korea.

The disclosure came before the informal North Korea-U.S. contacts regarding the counterfeiting issue this week in New York.

According to the newspaper, Hong Kong police nabbed a middle-aged Chinese American businessman who tried to pass through Hong Kong from Macao last month with a “substantial” amount of forged U.S. $100 bills. The exact amount was not made public.

But the man arrested by the police protested that he received those counterfeit bills unwittingly in a complicated commercial transaction in Macao and was released.

In an earlier development, the U.S. Department of Justice has started legal procedures to seize $2.67 million after finding bank accounts known to be connected with North Korean counterfeiting and cigarette smuggling in Hong Kong last week.

The media has recently reported that these bank accounts were used by dealers of North Korean counterfeit bills and fake cigarettes in 2004.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed in an annual report on its drug control strategies on March 1 that there is substantial evidence that North Korea was engaged in illegal activities such as money laundering and counterfeiting on the government level.

Jung-Ahn Kim credo@donga.com