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

[T.Baggins]

ROME, June 10 (AP) - (Kyodo)—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.

DAMN!

 

[GMT]

I would imagine the bonds will turn out to be forgeries.

 

[dongle69]

I never travel with more than $120 billion.

 

[robotwithdreams]

I never travel with more than $120 billion.

lol....lol...good one.

 

[T.Baggins]

My first thought is its bond counterfeiting operation. That seems most likely in my mind. Whoever had these could have been using them as collateral for some type of major deal. The value of the bonds is truly staggering and if not counterfeit, only a government would have this kind of money, and bearer bonds might as well be money....but, with everything going on in the world economy I just don't know. Maybe Japan or China is quietly trying to slip out of T's in a way that no one would notice they were selling... 249 bonds of the Federal Reserve of the United States, each with nominal value of 500 million dollars, as well as 10 Kennedy bonds each of 1 billion dollars in value

i didnt even know we had a billion dollar Kennedy bond

 

[AbbieDoobie]

They are probably bearer bonds like in the movie Die Hard.

~Abbie

 

[Yes4Prop215]

those two guys are probably just some dudes hired by the japanese government to try and sneak out those bonds, and they ended up getting caught.

what exactly can you do with those bonds? its not like having cash i assume, do you sell them to the US or something? sorry i have no idea really what they are trying to do.

 

[GMT]

Like T said, I would suspect they were going to try to pass them off as collateral on a major loan which would then get filtered and dissappear. One each to major finance houses on the same day, then vannish.

 

[HairlessCaveApe]

So then, -these aint no good if ya go to the bodega?

 

[HairlessCaveApe]

I just want 4 candy fish.

 

[funker]

yeah these have got to be forgeries, that is ridiculous! that would be like 10% of PIMCO's portfolio lol...maybe it was an error in translation and it was actually $134 million which I could believe...

edit -- if this was actually some sort of sanctioned government action by japan or china i think it would be the biggest financial story of the year, probably as big as anything that happened last fall...

i can't find any real mainstream source for this...the denominations they got caught with are no longer being issued and there's also the fact that only China, Russia, and Japan are the only sovereigns with that much US debt...

here's a link to a story about it on bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=ayy1QKcwcGN0

 

[Classyathome]

Slightly off topic, but I worked for a major Cdn. food company at corp. HO - and the day courier and I once had 18 million dollars in bearer bonds in our hands.

We were both stoners (he was an elderly Jamaican, we shared and traded weed all the time), and for a few brief minutes we contemplated dashing w/ them to the airport, and headin' to the islands. We coulda been home free, airport was 30 minutes away.

Once we hit that island, we coulda hid in the hills forever - rich beyond anyones dreams, and high till the day we died.

Calmer heads prevailed, and of course we didn't carry it out - but I still remember that feeling. I'm a painfully honest man, I take NOTHING that doesn't belong to me, but oh boy, it was tempting.

Really, really tempting...

 

[GMT]

18 mil in bearer bonds? I may have gone for it.

 

[Classyathome]

18 mil in bearer bonds? I may have gone for it.

Trust me when I say this - I ALMOST did...

It was soooooooo tempting - we coulda been long gone before it was even noticed.

It was a rush and a half - but I know I made the right choice (at least I'm pretty sure )...

 

[BUDOGHI]

They probably want to move the money before inflation which is coming cuts their value in half.

 

[vonforne]

They were bringing them to me and I was going to trade them 2 packs of BOG´s seeds for them.

V

 

[BobbleheadJed]

North Korea counterfeits all kinds of stuff, and they are really good at counterfeiting US money.

Fascinating story, it will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.

 

[minds_I]

I never travel with more than $120 billion.

Hello all,

Yeah, thats just plain silly.


Besides, after the first 120B, you are just showing it off anyway.


minds_I

 

[DeezyH]

those two guys are probably just some dudes hired by the japanese government to try and sneak out those bonds, and they ended up getting caught.

what exactly can you do with those bonds? its not like having cash i assume, do you sell them to the US or something? sorry i have no idea really what they are trying to do.

I would think if the Japanese govt wanted to slip out 130 Billion worth of bonds they would just use a diplomatic courier and fly it over directly. A diplomatic pouch can't be searched, so you could have anything in there really.

But I HIGHLY doubt those bonds are real, I mean 134Billion is like 3% their GDP and 19% of their total US debt holdings (http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt). That kind of movement is very noticeable and would have HUGE ramifications on global financial markets. So that was either a bad translation or someone got a little greedy with the forgeries.

Hell, maybe a Nigerian "Prince" convinced some Japanese businessmen to help launder some royal money...

 

[chubbynugs]

Is the swiss banking system really still lucrative for washing money? Sounds so scarface. I mean for real bond or not who in their right mind would let those bonds through that equal a billion dollars? That would tap out any individual bank if they wanted to cash out, let alone the other billions of dollars.