News of: Saturday, January 14 2006,

Two Euro coin popular with money counterfeiters

Last year, about 96,000 forged Euro coins were discovered in the European Union (75,000 in 2004).

Especially the 2 Euro coin was popular: about 80,000 of them were found.
The European Commission is not unsatisfied with this relatively low number, if compared to the 63 billion legal coins in circulation.

In Holland, the number of forged Euro bills decreased by 2 percent. The Dutch Central Bank found about 25,000 counterfeited Euro bills.

Three counterfeit production sites were found, in Hungary, Poland and in Bulgaria.