Algeria Claims Morocco Flooding Country with Counterfeit Currency, Damaging Economy

In Algeria, counterfeit currency has been put into circulation. L’Expression points an accusing finger at Morocco. The "Makhzen has turned into a laboratory of criminal economic theories," the newspaper notes. To support its argument, the author of the article recalls a few cases. The National Gendarmerie services recently arrested a Moroccan in possession of a sum of 4 billion centimes in counterfeit banknotes.

According to a statement from the Ministry of National Defense (MDN), the same Gendarmerie services succeeded in dismantling a criminal network composed of six individuals in May, in the border area of Oued Bounaïm, commune of Bab El Assa, daïra of Maghnia (Tlemcen).

The arrested persons had "huge sums of national currency (1000 and 2000 Algerian dinar banknotes) amounting to nearly 4 billion and 108.5 million centimes, part of which in counterfeit banknotes estimated at 3 billion and 93 million centimes, which they tried to introduce and circulate with the complicity of Moroccan criminal networks," accuses the same source.