2 Japanese carrying $134 bil worth of U.S. bonds detained in Italy

Japan Today ^ | Thursday 11th June, 06:18 AM JST | JapanToday

[Xenophon450]

ROME —

Two Japanese nationals were detained by Italian financial police last week after trying to enter Switzerland with $134 billion worth of undeclared U.S. bonds, mostly Treasury bonds, an Italian daily said Wednesday. The Japanese consulate general in Milan confirmed that the detention had taken place and said it was trying to confirm with Italian authorities whether the two were indeed Japanese nationals and their identities.

According to the report in il Giornale, two unidentified Japanese in their 50s concealed the bonds, including 249 U.S. Treasury bonds each worth $500 million, in a suitcase with a false bottom that was searched by the Italian authorities June 3 when they were in Chiasso, at the border with Switzerland, about 50 kilometers north of Milan. The daily did not say on what charges they have been detained, but the two may have been detained on suspicion of attempting to take a large amount of securities out of Italy without declaring it because the paper said they had not declared the bonds.

[Big_Monkey]

"North Koreans?

T-Bills in $500 million denominations are a whole lot harder to fake than good old Ben Franklins.

But, the mind races with speculation. People participating in legitimate business don't have false-bottomed briefcases with $134 Billion in unregistered, untraceable monetary instruments.

[April Lexington]

These were bearer bonds and the government doesn't issue them anymore because they were convenient for drug deals and terrorists. This is a HUGE number $134 billion in bearer bonds? Yowzers!

[KoRn]

/mark

[SpaceBar]

My initial hunch like a poster above was that North Korea might be involved.

[April Lexington]

Whomever owns the bonds should have hired Sandy Burglar to slip them into his socks and just Waltz right in!

[April Lexington]

Maybe the Japanese are truly worried about being nuked back into the stone age? I doubt even the Emperor has that kind of liquid wealth laying around...

[wideminded]

two unidentified Japanese in their 50s concealed the bonds, including 249 U.S. Treasury bonds each worth $500 million,

The treasury issues pieces of paper which are each worth half a billion dollars (plus interest)?

[djf]

No individuals could do this.
So the only answer is that they are working for the Japanese government or one of the large Japanese banks.

They are certainly trying to dump them on the sly.
So the question is “What do they know that they aren’t telling us?”

[TheWasteLand]

Very interesting, and bizarre. I presume something big was going down.

[Xenophon450]

Exactly, why even bother if the convenience exists. I have hardly ever heard of someone traveling with physical certificates, perhaps it happens more than I believe, but I suspect not. When I bought bonds it was a strictly digital affair, of course I never owned 135+ billion in bonds, maybe they get special decoder rings after the first billion ;-P.

[April Lexington]

Bond receipts of $500 million tend to be sold to sovereigns. Something very strange here. I wonder if these two guys were doing the Steve McQueen motorcycle trick?

[Ciexyz]

WTF, eh.

[staytrue]

“North Koreans?”

No, the north koreans would be lucky to have 2 wooden nickels and 100 trillion zimbabwe dollars.

Only the english, chinese, and japanese have that amount of US treasuries.

[April Lexington]

You’d hope they get something for that kind of dough! Even a prepaid Starbucks card would be nice!!!

[Pelham]

Anybody with Photoshop and a really good printer.

[pissant]

They are expert counterfeiters

[staytrue]

They were trying to cash them out or do a forex transaction without catching any publicity.

I have to agree. Probably China wants to dump US treasuries without causing a world wide currency crises.

[cookcounty]

????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????

[Big_Monkey]

"The treasury issues pieces of paper which are each worth half a billion dollars (plus interest)?"

Just look at our trade deficit. We'd go broke just printing the bonds if we didn't offer them in huge denominations.

While they are going technically untraceable. The US treasury I'm sure already knows who they belong to. As others have pointed out, there's only a few entities on the planet - Saudis, Chicoms, Japs that get these things.

[April Lexington]

Governments don't have to sneak T bonds into Switzerland. They just have their central bank transfer the values around the globe as necessary to balance accounts. If Japan is trying to pull a fast one by doing an end run there is something very wrong. I think this story is either erroneous or scary.