Tokyo Bitcoin Exchange Files for Bankruptcy

 

The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange in Tokyo filed for bankruptcy protection Friday and its chief executive said 850,000 bitcoins, worth several hundred million dollars, are unaccounted for.

Vatican cleric Scarano charged with aundering millions through the Vatican bank

    

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano is already on trial and under house arrest on separate charges of plotting to smuggle 20m euros ($26m; £17m) into Italy.

Pope Francis drew 6.6 million to the Vatican in 2013, three times Benedict

 

Pope Francis

 

VATICAN CITY - More than 6.6 million people attended events with Pope Francis at the Vatican from his election in March to the end of 2013, figures released on Thursday showed, compared to 2.3 million for former Pope Benedict in all of 2012.

 

Swiss banks lure clients with gold accounts, cash vaults

Geneva: Swiss banks are selling a new safe-haven idea to the rich and mighty from India and other countries -- special accounts for holding gold bars and high-value Swiss franc notes in the safety of their cash vaults.

Amid a global crackdown against alleged illicit wealth in secret accounts of Swiss banks, these new products claim to offer safety from the snooping eyes of regulators and tax authorities from the home countries of the rich foreign clients of banks operating from Switzerland.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, several Swiss bankers present at the recently held World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos said these gold accounts and cash vaults are being lapped up by the rich clients from across the world, including those from India.

As a result, some of the large banks have already hiked the fees for these gold accounts and the safe deposit boxes, which are also being used to store valuables like gold, diamond, paintings and other art works, a top Swiss banker said.

The bankers claimed that these safe deposit vaults are being lapped up because of limited risk of catching the prying eyes of the foreign governments having signed banking information exchange treaties with Switzerland.

None of the banks were ready to offer official comments on this trend, despite repeated attempts, although their officials admitted that they have successfully approached with these products many of their rich clients, including during the WEF summit.

The bankers said they are telling their rich clients that Switzerland's tax and information exchange treaties with India and other countries are mostly limited to funds in the customers' savings, deposit and investment accounts, and do not apply to the safe deposit boxes.

As a result, the demand has soared to record high levels for the safe deposit boxes and the 1,000 Swiss franc banknotes in Switzerland, as rich of the world are rushing to get them. As per the data available with Switzerland's central bank SNB (Swiss National Bank), the thousand-franc notes now account for 61 per cent of total value of all Swiss banknotes in circulation, up from about 50 per cent in 2011.

Just one thousand-franc banknote is worth about R

s.

 60,000, making it easier to store large amount of money in form of these notes. The total value of thousand-franc notes currently in circulation is over R

s.

two trillion (35 billion Swiss francs). Also, Switzerland is among the few major countries to have denomination of as high as 1,000, while the highest value banknotes in the UK and the US are only 50 pounds (about R

s.

 4,300) and 100 dollars (R

s.

 5,500), respectively.

Amid allegations of Indians stashing huge amounts of illicit wealth abroad, including in Swiss banks, the Indian government last year said it is making various efforts to bring back the unaccounted money.

As the global pressure mounts on Switzerland to give access to their banking account details, the demand is growing for thousand-franc notes as these high-value currency bills make it easier to store large amount of cash.

A rush had begun last year for the safe deposit vaults at Swiss banks, after which many banks have increased their capacity for these boxes and are now charging higher fees from their rich clients availing these services. While there are no official figures for these boxes, the commission and fees earned by banks for such facilities appear to be rising.

Swiss banks have registered a decline in their overall commission earnings, as also in their commission income from core banking operations, in the recent quarters, but their 'other commissions', which includes royalty and rental fees for safe deposit boxes, are rising sharply.

While Indians are alleged to have stashed billions of dollars worth black money in Swiss banks, the official SNB data puts the funds of Indian clients in Switzerland's banks at a modest 2.18 billion Swiss francs (R

s.

 12,700 crore) -- which is just 0.14 per cent of total foreign wealth there, as on December 31, 2011.

Swiss Jews fault president on statement

Switzerland's main Jewish organizations complain that President Ueli Maurer failed to address neutral country's failings during World War II on International Holocaust Day

Swiss Jewish groups are faulting the country's president for failing to address the neutral country's failings during World War II in a statement marking the annual Holocaust remembrance day.

In a statement Sunday, President Ueli Maurer said Switzerland remained "a country of freedom and law" during the war and became a safe haven for many persecuted people.

But Switzerland's main Jewish organizations complained Monday that he neglected also to mention "the refugees who were turned back to a certain death."

A government-commissioned report concluded in 2001 that Switzerland turned back many refugees although the government knew by 1942 of the Nazis' "final solution."

The government says that Maurer is aware of the need for a nuanced view of Switzerland's wartime role and hadn't intended to question it.

Exclusive: Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science

A secretive funding organisation in the United States that guarantees anonymity for its billionaire donors has emerged as a major operator in the climate "counter movement" to undermine the science of global warming, The Independent has learnt.

 

The Donors Trust, along with its sister group Donors Capital Fund, based in Alexandria, Virginia, is funnelling millions of dollars into the effort to cast doubt on climate change without revealing the identities of its wealthy backers or that they have links to the fossil fuel industry.

However, an audit trail reveals that Donors is being indirectly supported by the American billionaire Charles Koch who, with his brother David, jointly owns a majority stake in Koch Industries, a large oil, gas and chemicals conglomerate based in Kansas.

Millions of dollars has been paid to Donors through a third-party organisation, called the Knowledge and Progress Fund, with is operated by the Koch family but does not advertise its Koch connections.

Some commentators believe that such convoluted arrangements are becoming increasingly common to shield the identity and backgrounds of the wealthy supporters of climate scepticism – some of whom have vested interests in the fossil-fuel industry.

The Knowledge and Progress Fund, whose directors include Charles Koch and his wife Liz, gave $1.25m to Donors in 2007, a further $1.25m in 2008 and $2m in 2010. It does not appear to have given money to any other group and there is no mention of the fund on the websites of Koch Industries or the Charles Koch Foundation.

The Donors Trust is a "donor advised fund", meaning that it has special status under the US tax system. People who give money receive generous tax relief and can retain greater anonymity than if they had used their own charitable foundations because, technically, they do not control how Donors spends the cash.

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SOROS: The divergence between the Yen and euro will be aggravated, will badly affect Germany

Some in Germany seem to already be aware of this. Just the other day, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann pointed the finger at Japan, saying, "Already alarming violations can be observed, for example in Hungary or Japan, where the new government is interfering massively in the business of the central bank with pressure for a more aggressive monetary policy and threatening an end to central bank autonomy." He added, "A consequence, whether intentional or unintentional, could moreover be an increased politicisation of exchange rates."

In a note today, BofA currency strategist Athanasios Vamvakidis explained why Germany has two good reasons to be worried about the competitive devaluation of the yen underway in Japan.

Vamvakidis wrote:

First, Germany is worried that the Eurozone could end up being the last one to "play it fair." The ECB's strict inflation mandate limits its actions to support growth, actions that would have also weakened the currency, as in the case of the Fed and the BoE. Its commitment to a market-driven exchange rate prevents it from directly or indirectly manipulating the Euro, while its full independence makes any comments from European politicians about the Euro almost irrelevant, in contrast with the case of Japan recently.

As a result, if all other central banks target, directly or indirectly, a weaker currency, the Eurozone will end up with the strongest currency, which would be far from a market-driven level. The final outcome will be a weaker Eurozone economy, which could eventually threaten the ECB's independence.

Second, Germany's recovery depends to a large extent on China and could suffer from a weak JPY. To a large extent, Germany and Japan target similar markets, with seven out of their top-20 trading partners being the same (Table 1). Moreover, Germany is Japan’s fourth most important export market, while Japan is Germany’s 10th most important export market. China in particular is the third most important export market for both Germany and Japan.

Even more important, despite Japan's export share to China being much larger than the one of Germany (Chart 5), exports to China has been a driving force for Germany's recovery since the global crisis of 2008-09, contributing to growth much more than in other major advanced economies (Chart of the Day and Chart 6). The latter suggests that a further weakening of the JPY could reduce the power of a key growth engine for Germany, at a time when its recovery remains weak and the Eurozone is still in recession – for the same reasons, Germany, and as a result the Eurozone, would be affected negatively by a hard-landing scenario in China.

Vamvakidis is looking ahead to the February 15 G-20 meeting, where he says the yen devaluation could be addressed by policymakers from countries like Germany.

Search is on for Russia's £50billion of 'missing' gold

Six sites identified as places where the royal treasure may be located

British spy and a British diplomat said to be involved in its disappearance

'Missing' gold of the last Tsar worth 'up to £50 billion' at today's prices

Fresh attempts are to be made to find the 'missing' gold of the last Tsar of Russia - worth 'up to £50 billion' at today's prices - which is believed to be stashed or lost in Siberia. 

Some 95 years after Nicholas the Second and his family were shot by a firing squad loyal to Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, six sites have been identified where the royal treasure may be located. 

Two of them are in the world's deepest lake and another is in a region notorious for its gulag prison camps during the Stalin era. 

Gold from the Russian Imperial state was moved eastward during the First World War and initially held in Kazan on the Volga River. 

'One of Britain's most legendary spies, Sidney Reilly, and the colourful, womanising diplomat, Robert Bruce Lockhart, who with his lover Baroness Moura Budberg, Russia's 'Mata Hari', was accused of plotting to assassinate Lenin, were directly involved in this operation to prevent the gold falling into Communist hands,' said the Siberian Times.

The bed-hopping baroness - who also slept with writers HG Wells and Maxim Gorky - was the great great aunt of deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.  

After the Reds seized power in the capital, Petrograd, now St Petersburg, the anti-Communists moved it by train into Siberia.

Here it was under the control of Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who led the White Russian forces loyal to the royal family during the civil war which engulfed the country from 1918-20.

Certainly some of the treasure was used to buy arms to use against Lenin's forces, but historians are divided over how much was later grabbed by the Communists. Doubts also remain on the quantity of Tsarist gold sneaked abroad or hidden or lost in Siberia.

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GREECE: Alexis Tsipras, Greek left leader says he wants to keep euro, but on Greece’s terms

On many fronts, Europe’s financial troubles are ebbing, and if the forecasters at the European Central Bank, the World Bank,and the International Monetary Fund have it right, the euro zone should pull out of recession by the second half of the year.

But don’t declare the crisis over. Greek opposition leader Alexis Tsipras won’t let you. His hard left Syriza Party is polling stronger by the month, and if the country’s current fragile government coalition falls apart anytime soon, he could become Greece’s next prime minister.

If that happens, the carefully crafted sense that Europe is returning to normal could come crashing down. Tsipras, on a U.S. tour to burnish his firebrand image on Capitol Hill, at the State Department and at the International Monetary Fund, insisted in a speech at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday that he wants Greece to remain in the euro zone.

But he also was clear that he regards the current, German-dominated currency union a mismanaged disaster, feels the international bailout of his country has done little more than propagate human misery and mass unemployment and says that eventually the debts Greece owes to the rest of the world — largely to other European countries and the IMF — will have to be renegotiated.

If those sound like fighting words, well…

“We are prepared for a battle,” Tsipras said. “In politics there is no such thing as tea and crumpets. There are interests that conflict.”

Tsipras finished second in parliamentary elections last summer that were seen as a national referendum on Greece’s membership in the currency union. Since then, a coalition involving the country’s major conservative and socialist parties has held power and successfully negotiated new budget cuts demanded to keep international loans flowing, kept Greece in the currency union and started on steps it feels could revive the economy.

There’s no guarantee, however, that the coalition can hold on to finish the job as it begins laying off thousands more workers, deregulating powerful professional groups and making the other changes it has promised to the IMF, Germany and other large creditors. The country’s top officials are sparring not only over policy, but over who gets investigated and who doesn’t as the country learns more about the extent of tax evasion, secret Swiss bank accounts and other aspects of Greece’s mismanagement.

Tsipras is convinced the situation is on “a one-way street to disaster” – with the austerity that was supposed to revive the economy instead undercutting it, leaving Greece unable to repay its international loans. To Tsipras it is a self-defeating , snake-eating-its-tail brand of tragedy.

If elected, he says he won’t back out of the euro (what critics claim is his true aim). Rather he seems to be planning to try to hold the region hostage to coax a better deal in the form of less austerity and a break on the outstanding loans — in short, a fresh start.

In a speech littered with plenty of rhetoric about “robber barons” and plans for a “redistribution of wealth,” he said he was depending on fears of a euro breakup to give him leverage.

“We know our strengths and weaknesses,” Tsipras said of Greece’s place in the currency union. “If one of the links breaks it will be bad for the entire chain. . . . If a country like Greece leaves the currency, the next to leave would be Germany,” out of fear the currency region would disintegrate in an expensive meltdown.

He may be in for a rude surprise. One aim of Europe’s strategy during its now three-year crisis has been to buy time to better prepare for the worst. No one wanted Greece to default when it first disclosed the depths of its financial problems in 2009 because it would have wrecked the French and German banking systems — a possible prelude to a new “Lehman-like” collapse of the global economy.

European officials would still prefer Greece not to leave. For that to happen now, after so many summits, so much rewriting of European law and so many tens of billions of dollars in loans, would be a political embarrassment and, to some degree, destabilizing.

But it would not be as costly as it would have been before. The big banks and pension funds are well-hedged and largely divested of their Greek bonds, the money market funds are long gone from the country and the sense is that a Greek euro exit would spell a year’s worth of trouble for Europe but likely not cause any kind of global catastrophe.

In the most recent IMF report on the country, the fund estimated that a Greek exit might cost the euro zone as little as 1.5 percentage points of growth in the first year — not inconsequential, but a price some might pay to have done with the Greek drama.

Recall it was the heads of Germany and France who gave former Greek prime minister George Papandreou the ultimatum of bringing Greece’s finances into line or leaving the euro zone. If Tsipras takes charge and heads off to Berlin, Paris or IMF managing director Christine Lagarde’s office with an ultimatum of his own, he may not get the answer he expects.

The Global Elite Are Hiding 18 Trillion Dollars In Offshore Banks

The truth is that the global elite are hiding an almost unbelievable amount of money in offshore banks. 

According to shocking research done by the IMF, the global elite are holding a total of 18 trillion dollars in offshore banks.  And that figure does not even count any money being held in Switzerland.  That is a staggering amount of money.  Keep in mind that U.S. GDP in 2010 was only 14.58 trillion dollars.  So why do the global elite go to such trouble to hide their money in offshore banks?  Well, there are two main reasons.  One is privacy and the other is low taxation.

Privacy is a big issue for those that are involved in illegal enterprises such as drug running, but the biggest reason why people move money into offshore banks is in order to avoid taxes.  Some set up bank accounts in foreign nations because they want to legally minimize their taxes and others set up bank accounts in foreign nations because they want to illegally avoid taxes.  You would be absolutely amazed at what some large corporations and wealthy individuals do to get out of paying taxes.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of the rest of us don’t have the resources or the knowledge to play these games, so we get taxed into oblivion.

So why do they call it “offshore banking”?

Well, the term originally developed because the banks on the Channel Islands were “offshore” from the United Kingdom.  Most “offshore banks” are still located on islands today.  The Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Isle of Man are examples of this.  Other “offshore banking centers” such as Monaco are actually not “offshore” at all, but the term applies to them anyway.

Traditionally, these offshore banking centers have been very attractive to both criminals and to the global elite because they would not tell anyone (including governments) about the money that anyone had parked there.

These days some governments (particularly the U.S. government) are trying to change this, but we certainly will not see the end of offshore banking any time soon.

The amount of money that goes through these offshore banks is absolutely astounding.

It has been estimated that 80 percent of all international banking transactions take place through these offshore banks.  $1.4 trillion is being held in offshore banks in the Cayman Islands alone.

One article in the Guardian estimated that a third of all the wealth on the entire globe is being held in offshore banks, and others believe that as much as half of all the capital in the world flows through offshore banks at some point.

Obviously, all of this tax avoidance means that governments around the world are missing out on a whole lot of money.

It has been estimated that the U.S. government is missing out on $100 billion a year because of these offshore banks.  Others would put that figure significantly higher.

Avoiding taxes is a game that the global elite have mastered.  They are playing a whole different ballgame than you and I are.  They don’t just sit there like idiots and get blasted with taxes.  Instead, they hire the best experts and they employ every trick in the book to hold on to as much money as they possibly can.

These days, taking advantage of offshore tax havens is not that complicated to do.  The following is from arecent Politico article….

A plausible scenario plays out like this: I hire an accountant. Doing her job, my accountant tells me that if I sign a few legal documents and route my money through a small Caribbean island, I could keep more of my paycheck and pay a lower tax rate. I may have earned my money in the United States, but legally I can claim that it was, in fact, earned in a tax haven.

If it is legal, perhaps more of us should look into this.

After all, if playing these kinds of games is good enough for Mitt Romney, then why isn’t it good enough for all the rest of us?

During a campaign stop recently, Romney said the following….

“I can tell you we follow the tax laws”

I certainly believe him when he says that.  But it is what he said next that is troubling….

“And if there’s an opportunity to save taxes, we like anybody else in this country will follow that opportunity.”

I certainly believe him when he says that too.

ABC News recently revealed that Bain Capital has established an astounding 138 different offshore funds in the Cayman Islands.

Something has got to work pretty well to want to do it 138 times.

But Bain Capital was also very busy over in other offshore banking centers as well.

One of the largest shell companies that Bain set up down in the Caribbean was called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd.  It did not have an office in Bermuda and it had no staff in Bermuda.  But it helped clients of Bain Capital avoid a whole lot of taxes.

The following comes from a 2007 Los Angeles Times article….

In Bermuda, Romney served as president and sole shareholder for four years of Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. It funneled money into Bain Capital’s Sankaty family of hedge funds, which invest in bonds and other debt issued by corporations, as well as bank loans.

Like thousands of similar financial entities, Sankaty maintains no office or staff in Bermuda. Its only presence consists of a nameplate at a lawyer’s office in downtown Hamilton, capital of the British island territory.

“It’s just a mail drop, essentially,” said Marc B. Wolpow, who worked with Romney for nine years at Bain Capital and who set up Sankaty Ltd. in October 1997 without ever visiting Bermuda. “There’s no one doing any work down there other than lawyers.”

The amount of money being funneled through Sankaty today is absolutely stunning….

Today, Bain Capital manages $60 billion in assets, according to a spokesman. The total includes $23 billion in Sankaty debt and credit funds. Half a dozen Sankaty affiliates now are active in Bermuda, corporate registry records show.

The Sankaty debt hedge funds are organized as partnerships in Delaware that produce taxable business income by investing in fixed-income bonds and other debt instruments. Under tax law, even tax-exempt U.S. institutions may face a 35% tax if they invest directly in such hedge funds. By investing instead through a Bermuda corporation, the taxes are legally blocked, experts say.

Of course all of this is perfectly legal.

So nobody gets into trouble for any of this.

By keeping money offshore, even those managing these kinds of funds can avoid being taxed.

Victor Fleischer, a tax professor at the University of Colorado Law School, recently explained how this works….

“The idea behind some of the Cayman Island strategies was that the income that the fund managers receive for managing the money would be kept offshore in the Cayman Island — and the chief benefit is that you can defer when you recognize that income until a later date and you can reinvest the money from the Cayman islands and none of those reinvested funds get taxed until you bring them back either”

So is there anything wrong with this?

Well, it depends on how you define “wrong”.

The U.S. Congress has been trying to clamp down on offshore banking, but the ultra-wealthy are always two or three steps ahead of them.

The ultra-wealthy will go to just about any extreme in order to avoid paying taxes.

In fact, the Washington Post has reported that an increasing number of wealthy individuals are actually deciding to renounce their citizenship rather than face the wrath of the IRS.

The ultra-wealthy aren’t really concerned that much with national citizenship anyway.  If they want to influence an election, they can have far more influence by donating a few million bucks to a “Super PAC” than they can by casting the few votes that they have.

In a previous article, I described how the ultra-wealthy use offshore banks as a “shadow banking system” that plays by rules that most people don’t even know exist….

It is a shadow banking system that most Americans don’t know anything about. Most Americans don’t have the resources to be able to set up shell companies in half a dozen different countries so that they can “filter” their profits.  Most Americans don’t know a thing about complicated tax avoidance plans that tax lawyers use such as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich”.  Most Americans would have no idea how to eventually have most of the money that they make end up in Bermuda so that it can avoid taxes.

Most among the global elite simply do not care that U.S. debt is climbing into the stratosphere.  All they care about is keeping as much of their own money in their pockets as they possibly can.

Of course there are always exceptions to this rule.  Warren Buffett recently wrote a check to the U.S. Treasury for a little more than $49,000 to help pay off the national debt.

But considering the fact that the U.S. national debt is increasing by more than 100 million dollars an hour, that didn’t exactly do much to help.

Our system is deeply broken and the global elite are getting away with bloody murder.  Over the decades, they have carefully crafted the rules so that as much wealth as possible is funneled into their pockets, and they have carefully crafted the rules so that as much wealth as possible stays in their pockets.

Of course if we got rid of the personal income tax and the corporate income tax entirely and replaced them with a completely new system we could get rid of all of this game playing once and for all.

But what do you think the odds are of that happening?

President Vladimir Putin: Russia Exports Record $14B in 2012 Arms Sales

(Reuters) - Russian arms exports reached a record $14 billion this year, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday, extending a run of record-breaking sales in recent years that have included deliveries to Syriadespite the civil war raging there.

The world no. 2 arms exporter has cultivated new weapons clients in Southeast Asia and Africa, despite criticism that it is failing to deliver the technological benefits of Western suppliers or the low costs of emerging weapons exporter China.

"Let's talk about our results - they are positive. We are reaching a record level of weapons exports. Their total volume was above $14 billion," Putin said in a televised meeting with officials.

He said Russia had signed over $15 billion in new export contracts this year alone. He did not spell out when deliveries on those deals were expected.

Russia has faced Western criticism over its weapons sales to the Syrian government, worth nearly $1 billion in 2011.

Moscow says its arms deliveries to Syria, a longtime ally, do not violate international law and are not intended to help President Bashar al-Assad's government fight a 21-month-old uprising, but rather to fulfill Soviet-era commitments.

Russia has made clear it would use its U.N. Security Council Vote to veto an arms embargo against Damascus, contending such a move would be one-sided when rebels are able to obtain weapons via smuggling into territory they now control.

Moscow has reported no major arms deals with Syria this year. A major order of fighter jets was not completed, although it remains unclear as to why. Putin gave no specifics on Russia's main weapons buyers.

Top weapons clients also include Soviet-era client and regional Asian heavyweight India, as well as Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations wary of China's growing military might.

Putin said a major part of Russia's weapons business includes upgrades and refurbishment of Soviet-era technology and hardware. "We understand that competition in this sector of the international economy is very high and very serious," he said.

Exports from the world's top producer, the United States, have hovered around $30 billion annually in recent years.

State arms exporter Rosoboronexport accounts for around 80 percent of all Russian arms sales in a given year and nearly 20 independent firms comprise the rest with sales of spare parts and upgrades.

source

Bank Of England Eyes Plastic Money For UK

The Bank of England has made contingency plans for a changeover to plastic bank notes, Sky News has confirmed.

Tender documents for a new contract to print money have included a clause allowing for the polymer-based currency.

A source has told Sky News the printing proviso is to "future proof" the bank's supply of money.

A number of countries already use plastic money, which can be more durable than traditional cotton-based paper notes.

A £5 note has a life expectancy of around six months

Australia, Romania, Vietnam, Mexico and Malaysia are among those to have introduced polymer money.

The Australian $5 note lasts an average of 40 months whereas an English £5 note is worn out after an estimated six months.

Between 2003 and 2011 the Bank of England received claims for bank notes destroyed through washing totalling £747,000, and £8.625m for fire or flood damage money.

It also received claims for £946,000 for notes that had been eaten or chewed.

Claims for notes deemed to be "contaminated" topped £232m in the period, with the total figure for all damaged or mutilated money reaching £263m.

In addition to greater durability the plastic money can incorporate holograms and other security devices to thwart counterfeiters.

"The Bank of England is not doing its job properly if it does not take account any new security measures it can utilise to protect the currency," the source said.

Malaysia is one country which decided to use plastic money

The new printing contract will run from 2015 to 2025 or 2028.

The bank plans for a consultation period of at least 12 months ahead of any changeover, as cash and vending machines need mechanisms recalibrated.

A Bank of England spokesperson told Sky News: "It’s incumbent on the Bank, within our general research and development program to look at the pros and cons of various security features and substrates.

"No decision has been made as yet regarding printing on polymer."