BSP Recommends Heavier Penalties Vs Fake Money Makers

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has recommended to congress an amendment of its charter increasing the imprisonment against anyone who will be caught manufacturing fake money.

This as counterfeit making is considered as a big crime tantamount to have a heavy penalty, BSP Cebu Acting Director Leonides B. Sumbi said.

But unfortunately, congress has not yet acted the resolution submitted by the BSP in line with this intention.

There are already countless of people who succumbed to this five year imprisonment as a maximum penalty for fake money making. But while inside their cell, they are practicing more to improve the quality of their production of fake money, Sumbi said.

The advent of new gadgets and technology have encouraged unscrupulous people to engage on fake money-making, owing to the light penalty imposed on them.

“However they are only up to making the counterfeit because they cannot produce the genuine raw materials the BSP used in making real currency”, Sumbi said.

All the genuine papers and security threads and designs cannot ever be copied, Sumbi told.

Sumbi considered confidential matter how the BSP manufactured all the raw materials such as papers used for currency bills and even its security threads and designs.

She also said its easy to know or differentiate between the genuine and the fake ones, “once you touch and feel a currency bill,” Sumbi explained.

The BSP Cebu head said “all securities and designs of the genuine money are easy to feel by your fingers , due to its unique and heavy traces, while the fake ones, because they are just ordinary bond papers, can not stand straight when you hold it as it is easily bend down,” she said.

Sumbi added they are receiving reports regarding counterfeit money and their BSP intelligence group from Manila are doing all the arrest and investigations on the culprits.

“But before making any arrest, they have to consult first the local BSP officials to confirm the matter,” Sumbi said.

She said the BSP is just waiting for congress to consider their proposal or request to amend the 5-year imprisonment any violators “and imposing the heavier penalty may the only way to lessen the unscrupulous ones,” she said.