Italian prosecutors have arrested two Filipino nationals in an inquiry that led to seizure of a total of $116 billion in fake US government bonds, the country's tax police said in a statement on Thursday. The investigation started in August when police found $103 billion in fake bonds in a parcel at Milan's Malpensa airport during a police operation against international tax evasion. The other $13 billion was found subsequently.
A telephone number and other data on the parcel helped the tax police trace the two Filipinos - a woman residing in the northern Italian city of Genoa and her brother. "The two certainly have a well defined role as part of a transnational organisation with connections in the United States," Emilio Flora, head of the tax police at Malpensa, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
In June, police seized from two Japanese nationals similar fake US government bonds, totalling $134 billion, at the Chiasso rail station near the Italian-Swiss border. "There are many similarities between this case and Chiasso in regard to (the bonds) manufacture," said Fiora. "We can suppose that both bonds have a common criminal origin."
The US Secret Service, which polices counterfeiting of US currency, was looking at possible links between the fake bond seizures, he said. The Filipinos arrested on Thursday were wiretapped while talking to Asian members of a religious community about how to "manage" the bonds once they arrived at the Malpensa airport.