COUNTERFEITING OF US CURRENCY IN ECUADOR

UNCLAS GUAYAQUIL 000937 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: EFIN KFRD EC SUBJECT: COUNTERFEITING OF US CURRENCY IN ECUADOR RELATIVELY INSIGNIFICANT ¶1. On July 29 Guayaquil Consul General and Central Bank General Supervisor Mauricio Pareja Canelos briefed some 150 bank and media representatives on the features of the new fifty-dollar bill and its advantages. Counterfeit money, most of which enters the country from Colombia, has been a relatively minor problem Pareja told the CG. ¶2. An analysis, provided to the CG by Pareja, of counterfeit currency circulating in Ecuador covering the past three semesters revealed that the production of false fifty-dollar bills has fluctuated. However, with the arrival of this new bill, the Ecuadorian government is anticipating a steady decline. From the second semester of 2003 to the first semester of 2004 the amount of false one-dollar bills and twenty-dollar bills showed a considerable increase: one-dollar bills rose from 3,606 to 6,691 and twenty-dollar bills more than tripled, from 2,628 to 9,809. This dramatic increase suggests that the release of the new twenty-dollar bill in October 2003 has not yet contributed to a reduction in counterfeit production. In contrast, over the same time period counterfeit bills of all other denominations declined: five-dollar bills falling from 10,823 to 7,479; ten- dollar bills from 11,555 to 6,132; fifty-dollar bills from 59 to 26; and one hundred-dollar bills from 1,208 to ¶957. According to the Central Bank the total number of false US bills encountered in Ecuador over the past three semesters was forty thousand units, which the bank considers to be relatively minor. HERBERT