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Swiss central bank says 1,800 stolen bills in circulation

Around 1,800 invalid 1,000 Swiss franc bank notes are in circulation after being stolen from a printing press before they were finished, the Swiss central bank said Tuesday.

“Since autumn 2012, the Swiss National Bank has been aware of the fact that there is a small number of Swiss 1,000-franc banknotes in circulation which were not issued by the SNB,” the bank said in a statement.

Orell Fuessli, the company that has printed Swiss bank notes for more than a century, said an investigation by the attorney general’s office had found that 1,800 notes had been stolen before they were completed.

Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency sounded the alarm last October, informing Swiss authorities that two men had attempted to swap 1,000-franc (815 euros) notes with no serial numbers and perforated numbers for British pounds at a London currency exchange office.

The two men had 37 of the notes in their possession and were arrested on site, the Swiss attorney general’s office said in a statement.

One of the men, who lives in Switzerland, had been remanded in custody and had spent more than seven months behind bars, it said.

One of his acquaintances had been arrested in Zurich in April but had been released on June 14, the statement added.

Over the past two weeks, 17 invalid 1,000-franc notes had been seized, all with serial numbers added in after printing, the attorney general’s office said. Some of the perforated numbers had been tampered with.

“The invalid banknotes are difficult to recognise at first glance,” the central bank said, calling on anyone suspecting they might have one to ask their bank or the police to examine it.

Orell Fuessli will give anyone in possession of the invalid notes their nominal value, the bank said.