Nadaleen Singh

There has been a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in coun­ter­feit for­eign cur­ren­cy en­ter­ing the lo­cal fi­nan­cial sys­tem, se­nior Fraud Squad of­fi­cers re­vealed yes­ter­day. They said US$4929 was in bo­gus notes was de­tect­ed in the first quar­ter of this year, up from US$3190 for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2014.

The trou­bling da­ta was re­vealed by Ag Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent To­taram Dookhie and In­spec­tor Rishi Singh in their con­tri­bu­tion to day two of the First Caribbean Fraud Con­fer­ence host­ed by the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) at the Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Ag Su­per­in­ten­dent Dookhie said a large chunk of the coun­ter­feit US cur­ren­cy was de­tect­ed by Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed (RBL) but three oth­er com­mer­cial banks and one non-bank­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion had al­so re­port­ed bo­gus for­eign cash.

In the first quar­ter of 2014, RBL re­port­ed US$740 in coun­ter­feit for­eign cur­ren­cy dis­cov­ered and in the first quar­ter of this year the amount in­creased to US$2227. The Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC), in the first quar­ter of 2014, re­port­ed US$2450, which was more than the US $1,782 de­tect­ed in the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter for the year.

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, �1,200 and �20 in coun­ter­feit bills were in­ter­cept­ed by lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

In terms of lo­cal coun­ter­feit cur­ren­cy, Dookhie said the amount in­creased this year from $2070 to $43,630. RBL re­port­ed $1695 worth of coun­ter­feit TT cur­ren­cy last year and $16,660 in bo­gus lo­cal dol­lars this year.

Dookhie said 27 mon­ey laun­der­ing cas­es are cur­rent­ly be­fore the courts. Last year, the Fraud Squad dealt with 1,097 re­ports of fraud with a dol­lar val­ue of $85.4 mil­lion.

He said the Fraud Squad was ham­pered in pur­su­ing cas­es be­cause there were just 54 in­ves­ti­ga­tors on staff.

"One of our ma­jor chal­lenges at the Fraud of­fice, we have about 54 in­ves­ti­ga­tors. We should have 102. That im­pacts on us," he said.

"How­ev­er the Com­mis­sion­er in his 2015 strate­gic plan has out­lined mea­sures to deal with this chal­lenge."

Dookhie said an­oth­er chal­lenge fac­ing the Fraud Squad is the un­will­ing­ness of many vic­tim to tes­ti­fy in court. As a re­sult, he said, wrong do­ers walk free and can re­peat their il­le­gal acts.

He said the Fraud Squad had a four per cent de­tec­tion rate.

Yes­ter­day was the fi­nal day of the con­fer­ence which brought to­geth­er top na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts in fraud man­age­ment, com­pli­ance and se­cu­ri­ty. The high lev­el talks fo­cused on pop­u­lar and dan­ger­ous fraud ac­tiv­i­ties, as well as con­tem­po­rary is­sues in busi­ness and per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty, cy­ber crime and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

?TT COUN­TER­FEIT CUR­REN­CIES (TTD$)

2014

BANK

CUR­REN­CY­VAL­UE

CITIBANK

$120

IBL

$100

RBL

$1,695

UTC

$155

TO­TAL

$2,070

Ta­ble 1.0 1st Quar­ter 2014

2015

BANK

CUR­REN­CY VAL­UE

CITIBANK

$2,630

IBL

$590

RBL

$16,660

SCO­TIA

$14,620

UTC

$680

FCB

$8,450

TO­TAL

$43,630

Ta­ble 1.1 1stQuar­ter 2015

FOR­EIGN COUN­TER­FEIT CUR­REN­CIES

2014

BANK

FOR­EIGN CUR­REN­CY

USD ($) VAL­UE

EU­RO (�) VAL­UE

RBL

$740.00

-

UTC

$2,450.00

-

TO­TAL

$3,190.00

-

Ta­ble 1.2 1st Quar­ter 2014

FOR­EIGN COUN­TER­FEIT CUR­REN­CIES

2015

Bank

FOR­EIGN CUR­REN­CY

USD ($) VAL­UE

EU­RO (�) VAL­UE

RBL

?$2,227

UTC

$1,782

�600

CITIBANK

$250

IBL

$320

�600

FCB

$350

TO­TAL

$4,929

Ta­ble 1.3 1st Quar­ter 2015