site.bta More than 12 Million Counterfeit Euro Notes Retrieved from Water Reservoir

More than 12 Million Counterfeit Euro Notes Retrieved from  Water Reservoir

Plovdiv, November 1 (BTA) - More than 12 million counterfeit euro notes have been retrieved by divers from the Mechka [Bear] water reservoir near the southern town of Purvomai, in a special operation of the prosecuting magistracy, the State Agency for National Security (SANS), and the police, it was announced at a special news conference in Plovdiv, Southern Bulgaria, on Tuesday, attended by Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov, Plovdiv Appellate Prosecutor Ivan Daskalov, District Prosecutor Roumen Popov and supervising prosecutor Maria Todorova.

The value of the counterfeit money is approximate as it is still being counted, Daskalov said. Some of the notes are yet unfinished and are missing some of their features, e.g., holograms and water marks.

According to Tsatsarov, this is one of the biggest hauls of counterfeit euros ever found. The cache was found after an alert coming from SANS about a pending transaction involving a big quantity of counterfeit euros. Part of the notes were still in the form of uncut sheets. Tsatsarov said that the counterfeit notes are of extremely high quality and keeping them in water was with the purpose to make the pristine notes look used.

Three persons have been detained. A search into the house of one of them uncovered a big quantity of weapons and ammunition, including 14 hunting rifles and hunting machine guns stolen from a store in Haskovo back in February 2014, more counterfeit bank notes, tools for the production of counterfeit money, and 3.2 kilos of marijuana. The detainee in question made a full confession and showed the location in the water reservoir where the money had been hidden, Popov said.

Charges have been pressed against two of the detainees, for keeping big amounts of counterfeit money, possession of instrumentalities for counterfeit money, keeping drugs, weapons and ammunition, etc. The charges against the third detainee are to be specified and brought up, Todorova said.

It is believed that the counterfeit notes had been printed in a facility in Purvomai which the police uncovered some time ago and in respect of which verdicts have already been issued.