FORGERS TRAPPED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 251, 5 August 1941, Page 7

FORGERS TRAPPED.

OPERATING WITH BRITISH NOTES The disappearance of a score of foreigners« from their nsnal small cafe in Pera is the first indication of a big coup by Turkish political police, writes the Istanbul correspondent of the “Evening Standard,” London. The foreigners were members of a group who had successfully defied the police of Bulgaria, Rumania and Yugoslavia. They have been issuing counterfeit British £lO, . £5 and £1 notes in enormous quantities.

The whole gang has now been rounded up, including their chief who arrived in Istanbul from Milan, with a new consignment of forged notes. There is strong reason to believe that the affair has an important political background, and that it was part of a deliberate attempt to debase British currency.

About £150,000 worth of faked notes were placed in Istanbul alone, apart from sums which had been put into circulation in the Balkans and Near East. Some went to Bagdad. Among those arrested is a member of the staff .of a certain South American legation, another of whose members is known to have had close relations with certain German circles which in the past have gained notoriety for secret service activity. The gang included a number f of goodlooking women, who all held false phssports from half a dozen countries. The gang also trafficked in faked passports, mainly British. Their counterfeit notes were of two types, one an indifferent forgery known to have come from Italy, and the other good, believed to have been made in Germany. The notes were usually sold to persons about to leave Turkey, who, after smuggling them out in defiance of Turkish' regulations, were unable to take any action when they discovered that the notes were false. >■ The gang operated cautiously through a long chain of middlemen. Similar gangs are believed to be operating in other parts of the world.