EAST presents at Vigie Billet meeting

EAST Executive Director Lachlan Gunn gave a presentation at the General Assembly of Vigie Billet at the offices of the French Banking Federation (FBF) in Paris on Thursday 30 November 2017.  Presentations were also given by the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (Central Office Against Organised Crime – OCLO), the General Directorate of the National Gendarmerie (Central Office Against Itinerant Criminals – OCLDI), the Bank of France, the National Institute of Scientific Police (INPS), the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie (IRCGN) and the French Association of ATM Providers (AFPAB).

The EAST presentation gave an overview of the latest European crime statistics as published in the most recent European Payment Terminal Crime Report covering the first six months of 2017.

Vigie Billet is a non-profit association created to educate the public and especially retailers of the risks associated with accepting and circulating stained banknotes.  Typically the banknotes are stained by an intelligent banknote neutralisation system (IBNS) which marks all the cash as stolen using a degradation agent when an attempted attack on the system is detected. Ink is a popular agent, which functions by staining cash with a permanent dye. Such marked money is highly conspicuous and cannot be readily used.

Similar initiatives to Vigie Billet outside France are covered by Banknote Watch.