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ČNB unveils new tender

New security measures combat counterfeits

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 11th, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
The new 2,000 Kč bank note has some added security features to help combat the Czech Republic's counterfeit market.
While it looks almost the same as the old 2,000 Kč note, a bank note unveiled July 2 has several new security features to combat counterfeit bills.
What’s different about the new money: a protective marking stripe that’s wider than the one found on the old money, new ink and a new watermark.
“While some of these components are easily seen by the public, others are only detectable through instruments and various devices used by professionals to prove authenticity,” said Czech National Bank (ČNB) Chief Executive Director Pavel Řežábek.
By adding the new security measures, the ČNB is reacting to new printers, scaanners and copiers on the market that help counterfeiters make more realistic-looking fake notes, said ČNB spokeswoman Pavlína Bolfová.
“It is not possible to connect the issuance of the new bank notes with the imminent threat of mass counterfeiting, but certain signals in the past few years have indicated that such a threat was plausible,” Bolfová said.
New bills now contain the ČNB acronym. Visible against the light, the bank note’s new watermark indicates the nominal value of 2,000 Kč and includes a small ornament.
The new reflective stripe to the right of the portrait is now multi colored. Additionally, the bank note is printed with new ink, which has a richer quality when placed under ultraviolet light.
Older bank notes printed in 1996 and 1999 will still be valid, Bolfová said. The central bank does not currently plan to issue more new bank notes before the country’s planned transition to the euro in 2012.
Counterfeit crackdown
Since the 1993 birth of an independent Czech currency, ČNB has registered over 245,000 counterfeit banknotes.
“Most counterfeits are not fingered while in circulation, but seized during police crackdowns,” said Bolfová.
In the years following Czechoslovakia’s division in 1993, the confusion between circulated and non circulated currencies created a favorable atmosphere for counterfeits. That peaked in 1998, when bank officials saw the number of counterfeit bank notes increase nearly tenfold.
“The 1998 statistics were affected by the fact that the police were able to secure a substantial amount of 1,000 and 5,000 Kč bank notes in a local counterfeit currency production plant,” Fiscal and Monetary Relations Vice Chairman Leopold Surga wrote in a 2003 report.
Banks in Central Europe and around the world have stepped up measures to protect their currencies in the past 20 years.
National banks printed banknotes with sophisticated security devices since the 1980s. But because these notes contained protective components that were beyond the visible light spectrum, a majority of the notes’ safeguard marks could only be authenticated through the use of specialized equipment.
To heighten public awareness, central banks began implementing protective components that were easily detectable by the naked eye.
That meant adding stand-out stripes, new watermarks and fibers. More banks started using Swiss and Dutch techniques of see-through registers in offset type and engraving hidden, or latent, images. Many also added hologram images.
The new 2,000 Kč note still bears lithographer Oldřich Kulhánek’s softly contoured portrait of the Czech prima donna — the opera singer Ema Destinnová. The currency was last modified 8 years ago, when the ČNB issued new 5,000 and 2,000 Kč notes.

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com


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