Egyptian authorities have seized counterfeit foreign currency from an employee at a company who intended to exchange it at a major bank. Security agencies decided to detain this representative for possessing a counterfeit amount of 102,000 dollars. It was found that the representative attempted to exchange the amount at a branch of a major bank in the city of Samanoud in the Gharbia Governorate, where bank staff discovered that 72,000 dollars of the amount were counterfeit, consisting of a total of 720 fake 100-dollar bills. Authorities decided to detain the employee and notify the relevant officials at the Ministry of Interior to take legal actions regarding the incident and investigate the source of the fake dollars.
Hours before this incident, security agencies arrested two men and a woman found in possession of counterfeit money, and upon questioning, they admitted to purchasing it from an individual. The suspect was identified as an unemployed resident of Giza and was found with counterfeit amounts of both local and foreign currency. When confronted, he confessed to forming a gang specializing in counterfeiting both local and foreign currencies.
Egyptian security forces had launched extensive campaigns against the kingpins of foreign currency trading in Cairo and other governorates, amid a rise in the black market dollar price to unprecedented figures reaching 56 pounds per dollar. Security forces arrested two traders in Cairo for attempting to launder millions of pounds obtained from currency trading outside the banking system, trying to conceal the source of that money and disguise it as legitimate by purchasing residential units, cars, and establishing companies.
