KUALA LUMPUR: Police late last night arrested a senior special branch officer with the rank of superintendent and six others in connection with a syndicate specialising in forged US dollars and British pound sterling.
The officer is believed to be the “mastermind” of the syndicate.
The officer, in his early 50s attached to the police headquarters at Bukit Aman, and other suspects were detained after a raid at a luxury condominium unit at Jalan Genting-Klang.
FMT learnt that a police task force was tracking the officer’s movements for more than a month after being alerted by an intelligence report on the presence of fake currencies, especially US dollars, in the market and that several businessmen had fallen victim to the syndicate.
During the raid, police also recovered more than 10 boxes of forged currencies and the probe is now to verify if the notes were printed locally or smuggled into the country.
The authorities have also seized substantial amount of genuine currencies of various denominations.
“You need state-of-the-art technology to make these kind of quality print, where you need special detectors in establishing whether the notes were genuine or otherwise,” a police officer who was involved in the operation told FMT.
Besides the officer, it is learnt that an Indian national and three Indonesians were remanded for three days today to facilitate further police probe on the syndicate.
The syndicate is believed to have been active for more than a year and had reaped several millions of ringgit from their illegal activities.
“We are probing the officer’s accounts and other syndicate members, as well as to verify what kind of technology they had relied to print the forged notes,” added the officer.
Senior police officers were tight-lipped over the arrest but said the case was under investigation.
