Product Description
SCWMP.#16b - TBB.#B211bUnauthorized second printing.
Date: ١٩٧٣ (1973) - intro: june 1998
Signature: 1 - Sheikh Khalifa bin Sulman al Khalifa
Description: - Colour: Purple and violet.
Front: Map; coat of arms; Bab Al Bahrain gate.
Back: Ahmed Al Fateh Islamic Center mosque in Manama.
Thin windowed security thread.
Watermark: Arabian oryx (antelope) head.
Printer: Ciccone Calcografca, Buenos Aires
Size: 142 x 71 mm. - Material: Paper.
General information:
The unauthorized second printing of the Bahraini 20 Dinar banknote.
A group of confidence men passing themselves to be representatives of the Bahrain Monetary Agency, Illegally ordered these 20 Dinar notes from the Argentinian security printer Ciccone Calcografica.
More than 75,000 of these fake 20 Dinar notes (worth 1.5 million Dinars) were presented for payment at various branches of the Bahrain Monetary Agency in the United Arab Emirates from 4 to 11 June 1998. At this time, the notes were discovered to be slightly different from the notes currently in circulation.
The Bahrain Monetary Agency immediately contacted their printer Thomas de la Rue in London to find out if there had been any changes to the plates used to print the 20 Dinar notes, which of course Thomas de la Rue said there were none. The genuine 20 Dinar notes were consequently withdrawn from circulation on 30 July 1998. The Bahrain promptly replaced the purple 20 Dinar note with a peach colored version of the same design.
The Argintinian notes can be distinguished from the originals by the spacing between the first two Arabic letters of the horizontal serial number found in the bottom right of the front of the note and by the difference in shading in the panel behind the name in Arabic of the Bahrain Monetary Agency on the front.
Source: The Banknotebook.
