2 Japanese Carrying $134 Bil Worth Of U.S. Bonds Detained in Italy

I agree with this summary...too strange and too many inconsistencies!

Given that the discovery of $134.5 billion of bearer bonds in the suitcases of two Japanese nationals in Chiasso, Italy on the border of Switzerland qualifies as one of the largest smuggling operations in history, and given the various implications of such an act and the possible players involved, the silence regarding this huge story is simply stunning.

It is not a huge story, per se, because of the counterfeiting operation, because accusations and revelations of massive money counterfeiting operations have occured in the past. It is a huge story, rather, due to all the inconsistencies of the story and the potential explanations that could explain these inconsistencies. The larger story at hand is, who are the players (nations) involved, and what was the intention of this likely counterfeiting operation?

seekingalpha.com...

I know facts aren't as important to some as finding inconsistencies in the reporting to further wild speculation.

Bu these were bearer bonds, which means anyone trying to deposit them could do so without validating registration. Virtually the same as cash.

But Federal Bonds in such large denominations as $500 million, particularly with attached coupons, do not exist.

One can claim they do, and the US is keeping it a secret. But that claim can be made on anything.

Faked documents - not forgeries. You cannot forge what doesn't exist.

This will be ignored, but them's the facts.

Mike

reply to post by mmiichael


I am not ignoring it. It will not be ignored...many people are paying attention to this, it is a very big story that has been ignored by the mainstream media.

And you are not ignoring it either...you have made no less than 10 posts to this thread!

Originally posted by burntheships
I agree with this summary...too strange and too many inconsistencies!

Given that the discovery of $134.5 billion of bearer bonds in the suitcases of two Japanese nationals in Chiasso, Italy on the border of Switzerland qualifies as one of the largest smuggling operations in history, and given the various implications of such an act and the possible players involved, the silence regarding this huge story is simply stunning.

It is not a huge story, per se, because of the counterfeiting operation, because accusations and revelations of massive money counterfeiting operations have occured in the past. It is a huge story, rather, due to all the inconsistencies of the story and the potential explanations that could explain these inconsistencies. The larger story at hand is, who are the players (nations) involved, and what was the intention of this likely counterfeiting operation?

seekingalpha.com...

Originally posted by burntheships

I am not ignoring it. It will not be ignored...many people are paying attention to this, it is a very big story that has been ignored by the mainstream media.

And you are not ignoring it either...you have made no less than 10 posts to this thread!

I keep posting because I'm amazed that no matter how clearly I say something and how often I repeat it, you somehow manage to misinterpret it.

SOME MEDIA CONFUSION INITIALLY.

FAKE DOCUMENTS - NOT REAL.

MEANT TO SWINDLE GREEDY INVESTORS.

NO GOVERNMENT FUNDS INVOLVED.

NOT A BIG STORY.

reply to post by mmiichael


If it is no interest to you why do you keep posting on this thread?
I think you have other reasons...and yelling only makes you more obvious...

And I have to say thanks for bumping the thread so often!

Just for your infomation the story just took a very interesting TWIST!
Now if you can refrain from derailing further intelligent thought we can get on with this very
BIG Story!

Employees of Japan Finance Ministry arrested in Italy trying to smuggle $134 Billion in U.S. Treasuries in suitcases

www.turnerradionetwork.com

Two Japanese men arrested by Italian Police while trying to smuggle $134 Billion in U.S. Treasury Bonds concealed in suitcases, out of Italy into Switzerland, are employees of the Finance Ministry of Japan.

Turner Radio Network has now confirmed the two men arrested by Italy were trying to secretly dump Bonds that were previously held by the nation of Japan. The men arrested have told Italian police they were ordered to move the Bonds by the government of Japan because the Japanese government has lost faith in the ability of the U.S. government to repay its debts.

(visit the link for the full news article)

The implications of this situation are monstrous: An ally of the United States has been caught trying to secretly unload U.S. government debt. This is unmistakable proof that the United States government is headed into economic collapse because nations around the world have now officially lost faith in its ability to repay.

The fact that $134 Billion in Bonds was intercepted by Italian Police was confirmed two days ago by Bloomberg Business news (here). Today’s revelation by TRN that the men arrested were employees of the Japan Finance Ministry is a huge development which will cause sudden and dramatic reaction worldwide.

Source

[edit on 20-6-2009 by burntheships]

Employees of Japan Finance Ministry arrested in Italy trying to smuggle $134 Billion in U.S. Treasuries in suitcases!???

The Japanese men taken into custody by Italy have been released and they were allowed to take their "fake" Bonds with them! Authorities now say they do not know where the men went. Those same authorities have told the "Financial Times" of London that the Bonds were "most likely fakes." (Financial Times Story Here)

Updated Commentary: This is the single biggest farce we've heard about in a long time. Does anyone actually believe that anyone would be transiting a national border with $134 Billion in "fake" Bonds concealed in a suitcase with a fake bottom?

Does anyone actually believe Italian Authorities would ignore their own laws and release persons who violated Italian financial disclosure laws?

Does anyone really believe that a bank or other entity would simply accept a US Treasury "Intergovernmental" Bond with a face value of either $500 Million or $1 Billion without ever calling the US Treasury to determine if the bonds were valid?

The absurd explanation provided by the U.S. Government that the bonds were "fakes" would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic.

Clearly the government of Japan got caught red handed trying to dump U.S. Treasury Bonds because they no longer trust that the USA can pay its debts. When the issue blew up in their faces, everyone from Japan to Italy to the USA had to get together and lie about what was happening with the hope that other nations wouldn't start dumping U.S. Treasuries too.

That is precisely what happened. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or stupid. . . . . or thinks we're stupid enough to believe them!

We have now entered the official "end game" for the United States Government. They are broke. Bankrupt. They have no hope of ever repaying their debts. Countries around the world know this and are starting to dump U.S. debt and U.S. currency because it will all become worthless very soon.

There's no stopping it. There's no avoiding it. There's no way to patch things up to make this go away.

The United States of America has been bankrupted by its own government. That government bears sole responsibility for the economic collapse that is coming. When the collapse happens, the American people - the most heavily armed population on Earth - will probably take up arms and overthrow the government by force. In our view, forcible overthrow is a fate the U.S. Government richly deserves.

It would be very wise for those of you who still can, to consult with qualified financial people about how to get your assets out of the USA and your money OUT of U.S. dollars

source


[edit on 20-6-2009 by burntheships]

And this story in the Financial Times London implicates the Italian Mafia...

Mafia blamed for $134bn fake Treasury bills

Whether the men are really Japanese, as their passports declare, is unclear but Italian and US secret services working together soon concluded that the bills and accompanying bank documents were most probably counterfeit, the latest handiwork of the Italian Mafia....

.....Italian officials, while pointing out that hauls of counterfeit money and Treasury bills were not unusual, were stunned by the amount involved. Investigators are looking into the origin and destination of the fakes.

Italian prosecutors revealed last month that they had cracked a $1bn bond scam run by the Sicilian Mafia, with the alleged aid of corrupt officials in Venezuela’s central bank. Twenty people were arrested in four countries.

The fake bonds were to have been used as collateral to open credit lines with banks, Reuters news agency reported. The Venezuelan central bank denied the accusations.

www.ft.com...

Originally posted by burntheships

Just for your infomation the story just took a very interesting TWIST!
Now if you can refrain from derailing further intelligent thought we can get on with this very
BIG Story!

Big Fraud.

The update on the Turner Radio site you linked is somewhat anticlimactic.

www.turnerradionetwork.com...:employees-of-japan-finance-ministry-arrested-in-italy-trying-tosmugg le-134-billion-in-us-treasuries-in-suitcases&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50

UPDATE June 19, 2009 2115 HRS ET -- The Japanese men taken into custody by Italy have been released and they were allowed to take their "fake" Bonds with them! Authorities now say they do not know where the men went. Those same authorities have told the "Financial Times" of London that the Bonds were "most likely fakes."

Proving as I noted, having fakes is not illegal.

[edit - linked to the same FINANCIAL TIMES story]

www.ft.com...

The mystery deepened on Thursday as an Italian blog quoted Colonel Rodolfo Mecarelli of the Como provincial finance police as saying the two men had been released. The colonel and police headquarters in Rome both declined to respond to questions from the Financial Times.

“They are all fraudulent, it’s obvious. We don’t even have paper securities outstanding for that value,’’ said Mckayla Braden, senior adviser for public affairs at the Bureau of Public Debt at the US Treasury department. “This type of scam has been going on for years.’’

Lots of garbled reporting and idle speculation. As with Billion dollar bonds and online reporting, you can't believe everything you read.

This is not even the largest amount of these circulating fakes uncovered in the last year. The Texas haul was twice the size.


Mike



[edit on 20-6-2009 by mmiichael]

Also a few pages back...someone was talking about the Vatican...here we go!

For those of you who don’t know, a report surfaced on Monday, June 8, on an obscure Vatican-sponsored news website, AsiaNews.it, that Italy’s financial police (Guardia Italiana di Finanza) had “seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland.”

According to the report, these securities included “249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth $500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar [sic] each.”

If the report is true (it has been relayed by the Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Times and the Dow Jones news service), it means these two as-yet-to-be-identified men were carrying securities amounting to the GDP of New Zealand – or enough money to fund three Beijing Olympics – in non-negotiable bonds in their suitcase.

As Bloomberg put it, “If economies were for sale, the men could buy Slovakia and Croatia and have plenty left over for Mongolia or Cambodia.”

The story is filled with bizarre and incongruous details. Enough, in fact, to make the mind of even the most determined news hound spin.

First, there’s the obvious question of whether these billion and half-billion dollar notes are real or fake. According to the AsiaNews report, “Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake but […] if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones.”

The story has received a lot of coverage in Europe and Asia. But US media outlets have ignored it, despite the fact that it concerns either the biggest ever counterfeiting or the biggest ever smuggling of US bonds. (A third possibility is that the story itself is a fake. Even so, this would merit serious attention as it implies that someone or some state or state agency is interested in destabilizing the value of US debt at a time when it’s most sensitive to destabilization, i.e., when America is issuing most of it.)

The story broke smack in the middle of heightened concerns over the stability of US bonds markets. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has just completed a trip to China, where he did his best to assuage Chinese fears that US fiscal and monetary policy is undermining the value of US government and agency debt. And the BRIC nations – Brazil, Russia, India and China – have recently stirred the pot by calling for a less dollar-centric global currency system.And following the report of the bond arrests, Japan – the second largest foreign holder of US debt after China – felt it necessary to come out with the following statement via its finance minister: “We have complete trust in the fact that the U.S. views its strong-dollar policy as fundamental. So our trust in U.S. Treasuries is absolutely unshakable.” (As Karl Denninger points out on his blog, The Market Ticker, the Japanese said in December 1941 that all was well, too.)

According the Dow Jones Business News, “An official at Japan’s Consulate General in Milan said Tuesday that Italy was still investigating the case, adding it wasn’t confirmed that the two men are Japanese.”So are the alleged smugglers/counterfeiters Japanese or aren’t they? And if they aren’t, why did the press reports say they were?According to Dow Jones, the Japanese have “sent a letter asking for further information to the Italian tax police as well as prosecutors.” But why the delay?

A breaking report from Joe Weisenthal at The Business Insider, snatched from Japanese TV, says the “Japanese” bond smugglers are now missing. If this was a simple case of counterfeiting (albeit the biggest in history), it’s highly unlikely the Italian and US authorities would have let the men carrying the bonds simply slip off into the night…

The amount seized should ring alarm bells. On March 30 2009, the Treasury Department announced that $134.5 billion remained in the TARP. The stated amount of seized bearer bonds was $134.5 billion.
According to JS Kim of investment research company SmartKnowledgeU, “The two well-dressed Japanese men opted to travel to Chiasso on a local train normally full of Italian manual laborers commuting to Switzerland. If they were really intent on successfully smuggling these bonds, counterfeit or real, why would they not take more care to select a travel route in which it was literally impossible for them not to stick out like two sore thumbs?

The bearer bonds were discovered in a hidden briefcase compartment after a customs inspection. As Kim also points out, “If the bonds were indeed authentic and owned by a nation state, they could have been transported in a diplomatic pouch exempt from customs searches that would have guaranteed transport without detection.”

Here at Notes we have two theories about the bond arrests, presuming the story is legit. (That is to say presuming the reporting on the story is legit. More on this later.) Both have serious implications for the US economy and all who depend on it for their livelihoods.

www.contrarianprofits.com...

Now here is what I like to see! Some journalists who are going to get in deep!

Even as we report this, the story is continuing to evolve, not by erroneous first reports, but by the deliberate scrubbing and sanitizing of facts. Not only are the facts being scrubbed, but the perpetrators are disappearing just like a murderer who attempts to scrub clean the blood from the crime scene. But even the best attempts are never enough to rid all traces of the crime.

Since this crime was initially reported in the German and Japanese media exactly one week ago, professional investigators from the Northeast Intelligence Network and veteran journalists from Canada Free Press teamed up to uncover as many facts about this case as possible. During the course of our investigation, we quietly contacted and interviewed a number of law enforcement and intelligence sources from three countries on two continents. Exhaustive research into not only the facts of this case, but into related areas and historical events was also performed during our coordinated investigation.

The following represents our initial but very disturbing findings, with additional information promised to follow.

homelandsecurityus.com...

This write up in the Asia Times is very pointed at the grand canyon sized security hole in the finanical system!

Also inside the agents found extensive and detailed original bank documents about the bonds.

If what Meyerhardt says is true, some major financial institutions have been deceived by the securities carried by the two Asian men. This would be a bombshell and raise serious questions as to how many bank assets are actually made up of securities that for Meyerhardt are “clearly fakes.”

If counterfeit securities of such high quality are in circulation the world’s monetary system, let alone that of the United States, is in danger. International trade and exchanges could come to a halt.

Whether it is counterfeit money or money laundering, what happened is potentially more dangerous for the stability of the international system than the results of Iran’s elections.

If the bonds are real it means someone with a lot of cash no longer trusts the US dollar as a reserve currency. If this is the case then it would spell the end of the Bretton Woods system and most likely negatively impact world trade.

www.asianews.it...

Sorry if I got annoyed. Just following this with fascination watching how the media can botch a story and how it further gets mangled online.

The problem was the source report in Italian didn't have a get a grip on what was happening and it spun out of control after that.

I guess a lot of people have trouble getting their heads around the concept of fakes trying to look like something that doesn't actually exist in a paper format.

The most interesting development is that there is new thinking that some banking institutions in the world may be holding onto securities that actually have no value.

Mike


[edit on 20-6-2009 by mmiichael]

Please excuse this question if it is utterly naive and foolish, but how DO we know if the Fed has been issuing fake bonds? There appears to be no oversight over their activities, and they are currently unaware of the location of vast amounts of money because they apparently don't "look at" such things and no independent auditing is done. We know only what they tell us, which is not much. Once we accept that Bernie Madoff did his thing for so long, just to enrich himself and family, without any problem what is there to stop the fed from doing their version of it. they are allowed to print money any time they feel like it. why not print unofficial bonds to sell to enrich themselves or their partners? do we have ANY way to find out what they've been up to these past decades?

reply to post by earlywatcher


Good question...and we really do not know what how when why The Fed does. One thing for sure, the men in charge are all corrupt. There are many conflicting stories about the appearance of these "bonds".
The SEC first declined to comment, and then they issued the statement that they were "clearly fake" One story I read said that the SEC has not seen the actual bonds only photos.

We really do not know...this could have been part of a secret covert CIA action...I find it so odd, and there are many inconsistencies!

These bonds were not obvious forgeries. For nearly two weeks, Italian authorities probed their authenticity and eventually requested the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's appraisal. Asked what it concluded, SEC spokesman John Heine told me Wednesday: "I think I need to decline to comment on this."

Wednesday evening, however, Bloomberg News quoted Treasury spokesman Stephen Meyerhardt. He called the bonds "clearly fakes" and added: "That's beyond the fact that the face value is far beyond what's out there." Meyerhardt noted that only $104.5 billion in bearer bonds exist -- $30 billion less than the briefcase's contents.

A $500 million U.S. bond may sound fanciful. However, the federal government indeed produced them between 1955 and 1969. To alleviate some of the physical burdens and administrative costs of storing and handling lower-denomination bonds, the Treasury began offering securities with much higher face values.

"The Bureau of Engraving and Printing only had to print one $500 million security instead of 500 $1 million securities," economic historian Franklin Noll has explained. Electronic ledgers eventually obviated the need to keep actual paper securities, so nine-figure bonds followed the Indian-head nickel into oblivion.

So, these phony bonds could be central to a gargantuan scam perpetrated by big-league crooks equipped with sophisticated printing presses. If successful, such high-level scammers would make Bernie Madoff look like Warren Buffett.
www.scrippsnews.com...

Originally posted by earlywatcher
Please excuse this question if it is utterly naive and foolish, but how DO we know if the Fed has been issuing fake bonds?

[...]

what is there to stop the fed from doing their version of it. they are allowed to print money any time they feel like it. why not print unofficial bonds to sell to enrich themselves or their partners? do we have ANY way to find out what they've been up to these past decades?

Apparently there are 'off the books' mega-bonds in the billions issued to the likes of Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, and other once co-operative cutthroat foreign dictators. A calculated risk, it was considered unlikely they would ever be cashed in. Most ended up in Indonesia, once an economically independent haven for hidden money.

The US knowingly has the discretion of honouring their financial obligations or claiming them invalid.

That's the nature of any large scale transaction. A certain level of confidence and trust is required when. For decades a bond from the US was considered the most solid guarantee your money was safe and earning a decent interest. We'll see how long that continues to be the perception.

Mike

reply to post by burntheships


also that line in the asianews story about there being accompanying bank documents for the bonds. that was scary. why bother with that if these were so crude? the scrubbing of information, the release of the "japanese nationals" involved without any release even of their names makes it sound like compromised/corrupt action from the very highest levels. it didn't help my confidence in my US gov that they have only seen photos of the fake bonds "on the internet". too much trouble to go to italy to check them out?

one of those stories posted here said the italian gov was supposed to destroy them immediately. did they do that? what actually happened to them? is this "destruction" also a way of covering up the fact that they exist at all?

of course it could be that i just watched The International the other day and assume corruption at the highest levels!

reply to post by mmiichael


so these bonds really could be some of those "chickens coming home to roost" to quote rev wright? no surprise that people should become nervous about the value of our money. WE are nervous about that. i was going to ask why they were taking them to switzerland, but it almost seems like they were trying to be caught by riding that particular train and dressed so inappropriately. but that would suggest they wanted the bonds destroyed rather than they wanted to cash them in. I am mixing up my "they"s because each refers to a different group.

if there truly crudely done and would fool no one, this story would have gotten more mileage and the guys would have been identified and interviewed and possibly given their own reality show. the fact that they disappeared makes me think bigger fish are involved.

btw, is there any handy background info on these off the books bonds anywhere?

Is this the death of the dollar?
After two smugglers were stopped last week with what at first appeared to be $134bn in US state bonds, the tension and paranoia surrounding the fate of the dollar hit a new high.

Maybe that was the purpose all along!

How on earth did these two men, who at first refused to identify themselves, come to be there, trying to ride the train into Switzerland carrying bonds worth more than the gross domestic product of Singapore? If the bonds were genuine, the pair would have been America's fourth-biggest creditor, ahead of the UK and just behind Russia. No sooner had the story leaked out from the Italian lakes region last week than it sparked a panoply of conspiracy tales. But one resounded more than any other: that the men were agents of the Japanese finance ministry, in the country for the G8 meeting, making a surreptitious journey into Switzerland to sell off one small chunk of the massive mountain of US bonds stacked up in the Japanese Treasury vaults.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

Originally posted by earlywatcher

ii was going to ask why they were taking them to switzerland, but it almost seems like they were trying to be caught by riding that particular train and dressed so inappropriately. but that would suggest they wanted the bonds destroyed rather than they wanted to cash them in. I am mixing up my "they"s because each refers to a different group.

btw, is there any handy background info on these off the books bonds anywhere?

The guys carrying those fake documents have all sorts of intrigue attributed to them. They were going to Switzerland, the only border on the Continent with a customs check. As a banking capital one could meet with bigger players, say going to their safety deposit boxes. If real these type bond would not be cashed by a bank but could be applied as credit. In the 2008 Texas version of this the women showed photos of her $268 Billion work of similar fake bonds in a Swiss Bank.

My guess is with all the talk of currency dumping it was thought a story of having this kind of loot would be more plausible. Maybe some thug military regime in Africa or even North Korea might buy into the story.

Why the train? I suspect these were runners trying to do it economy class.

The big multi-trillion $ story of the 90s is usually referred to as Treasurygate. Still a mystery and one that makes this one look tiny in comparison.

Can't find much mention on ATS surprisingly but a good summary here

www.theantechamber.net...

Mike





[edit on 21-6-2009 by mmiichael]