In the first six months of 2018 nearly 1,500 falsified banknotes have been detected and pulled from circulation in Croatia, including some 1,200 euro bills. There were also 263 forged kuna bills, which is 192 percent up from the same period in 2017, the central bank reported.

Statistically, this means that there are 1.1 falsified kuna bills per million genuine ones in circulation, the central bank said. Meanwhile, euro-denominated banknotes are much more attractive to forgers, with more than 1,200 fake euro bills found in the same period, or 470 percent up from last year, business daily Poslovni Dnevnik reported on Monday.

As for kuna bills, the most popular forgeries were 200 kuna bills, which made up more than 50 percent of false bills found, followed by 100 kuna and 500 kuna bills.

Out of some 1,200 forged euro bills, the most popular ones were 500 euro bill. The number of forged euros has been rising since Croatia’s accession to the European Union in July 2013, and the amount of detected forgeries markedly rises during the summer season, when millions of foreign tourists bring in euros into the country.

Last year 785 fake euro bills were found, unchanged from the three previous years. However, the forgeries found are still of poor quality.

“Forgeries detected in the first half of 2018 have not caused any disturbances in cash circulation on account of their quantity and quality, neither in specialised institutions nor among the general public. They also failed to cause any financial damage on a larger scale,” the central bank said.

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