The International Convention for the Suppression of Counterfeiting Currency (french: Convention internationale pour la répression du faux monnayage) is a 1929

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treaty A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between actors in international law. It is usually made by and between sovereign states, but can include international organizations, individuals, business entities, and other legal per ...

whereby states agree to criminalize acts of currency counterfeiting. It remains the principal international agreement on currency counterfeiting.

Background

The post-war years were marked by a meteoric rise of money counterfeiting across Europe.

Hyperinflation In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as t ...

plagued many European currencies significantly increasing the profitability of forging the relatively stable

United States dollar The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...

and

Dutch guilder The guilder ( nl, gulden, ) or florin was the currency of the Netherlands from the 15th century until 2002, when it was replaced by the euro. The Dutch name ''gulden'' was a Middle Dutch adjective meaning "golden", and reflects the fact that, ...

. At the same time political tensions hindered international police collaboration on the issue.

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became a hub of the clandestine trade. Its long established trade connections, the use of easily forgeable

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ed banknotes by the successor states of Austria-Hungary and breakdown of police collaboration between said states led to the creation of large criminal syndicates dedicated to counterfeiting. In

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...

, nationalist groups began forging the currencies of neighboring countries with the tacit support of the Hungarian state. In 1921, a group of Hungarians led by

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Gyula Mészáros set up a press in the town of Metzelsdorf outside

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, Austria. The group managed to produce and put into circulation 60,000 500-

Czechoslovak koruna The Czechoslovak koruna (in Czech and Slovak: ''Koruna československá'', at times ''Koruna česko-slovenská''; ''koruna'' means ''crown'') was the currency of Czechoslovakia from 10 April 1919 to 14 March 1939, and from 1 November 1945 to 7 ...

banknotes. Most of the forgers were arrested in July 1921, by that time the Czechoslovak government was forced to pull the entire sokol note series out of circulation, undermining the credibility of its currency reforms. It was estimated that approximately 1 million $ worth of counterfeit currency was put into circulation each year in the middle of the 1920s. The sokol affair prompted Czechoslovak police to establish police unit specializing in countering money counterfeiting in

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while also seeking cooperation with neighboring countries. In the Netherlands, K.H. Broekhoff founded the Dutch Counterfeit Money Center. Police authorities began closely collaborating with the issuing banks while

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s of forgeries from different parts of the country were treated as a single case. In 1923, Vienna Chief of Police

Johannes Schober Johannes "Johann" Schober (born 14 November 1874 in Perg; died 19 August 1932 in Baden bei Wien) was an Austrian jurist, law enforcement official, and politician. Schober was appointed Vienna Chief of Police in 1918 and became the founding pres ...

convened the International Police Congress in Vienna which gave birth to the

International Criminal Police Commission The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO; french: link=no, Organisation internationale de police criminelle), commonly known as Interpol ( , ), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and cri ...

(ICPC). The ICPC promoted the internationalization of policing collating and disseminating information on crime between its members. Another Hungarian nationalist counterfeiting plot known as the Franc affair was uncovered in December 1925. The plotters sought to intentionally damage the French economy through the large scale production of counterfeit

French franc The franc (, ; sign: F or Fr), also commonly distinguished as the (FF), was a currency of France. Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money. It w ...

s. In the aftermath of the affair France turned its attention to combating international counterfeiting. French lawmakers revised a February 1926 Czechoslovak proposal to create an international police organization whose members would fight money counterfeiting. French Prime Minister

Aristide Briand Aristide Pierre Henri Briand (; 28 March 18627 March 1932) was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic. He is mainly remembered for his focus on international issues and reconciliat ...

's proposal called for the unification anti-counterfeiting laws, police and judicial cooperation and the creation of national anti-counterfeiting centers in each signatory. The proposal was heralded by Romanian legal expert

Vespasian Pella Vespasian V. Pella (4/17 January 1897, in Bucharest – 24 August 1952, in New York City) was a Romanian legal expert. Legal career and opinions During the interwar period, he promoted the notion of international criminal proceedings against he ...

who shaped it into the draft of the International Convention for the Suppression of Counterfeiting Currency.

Convention

States that ratify the Convention agree to criminalize the creation, use, and exportation or importation of counterfeit currency. Under the agreement, no distinction is to be made as to what currency is the subject of the crime. Under the treaty, currency counterfeiting is an extraditable offense. States also agree to establish a central office that will forward to all other state parties cancelled specimens of their state's currency and notify the other states when changes to their currency are implemented. The Convention was concluded in

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situa ...

on 20 April 1929 and entered into force on 22 February 1931.

Aftermath

The convention facilitated ICPC's recognition by the League of Nations and formalized its efforts to fight international crime. As of March 2016, it has 83 state parties and remains the primary international agreement on currency counterfeiting. It was most recently ratified by

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in March 2016.

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, and the

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are among the states that have signed the treaty but have not ratified it.

Footnotes

References

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External links