Man attempts to buy beer using fake money, arrested
Police in Mwanza have arrested a man who attempted to buy beer using fake banknote.
Mwanza Police spokesperson, Edwin Kaunda, said they first arrested Mike Daniel, 19, on January 6 2020 at Riverside Bottle Store where he wanted to buy beers using a fake K2,000 bank note.
Upon interrogation, Daniel led police officers to the house of Abraham where K2,000 fake bank notes, totaling K66,000, were found.
Abraham, 45, is from Lupiya Village and Daniel is from Nchotseni Village, both Traditional Authority Kanduku, Mwanza.
Kaunda said the suspects will appear before court soon to answer charges of being found in possession of fake currency.
Last year, Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) said it was following up leads that unscrupulous dealers were printing the Malawi Kwacha in neighbouring Zambia and Tanzania and infiltrating the fake notes into Malawi liquidity system.
The fake bank notes threaten Malawi’s economy as the local unit can lose authenticity, reduce value of real money, destabilise inflation and reduce acceptance of paper money.
RBM Deputy Governor Responsible for Bank Supervision, Grant Kabango, told The Daily Times edition of September 29 2019 that the fight against infiltration of fake bank notes was still on.
“We have a number of leads that are taking us to those jurisdictions. First of all, we start from the people who are caught with counterfeit notes and then we follow up on who supplied them and that takes us through to the manufacturers,” Kabango said.
In August 2019, two men were arrested in Dowa District after being found in possession of fake K1,000 notes amounting to K140,000.
In 2018, RBM recorded 1,757 pieces of counterfeit notes.
Together with other law enforcement agencies, RBM prosecuted and won in court 28 cases involving illegal foreign exchange externalisation, transfer pricing and counterfeit currency equivalent to K587.7 million was forfeited to the Malawi government.
