A government official from North Macedonia has been arrested for allegedly mass-producing millions of fake 2 euro coins, said the European Union's law enforcement agency.
A months-long investigation by Macedonian and Kosovo authorities, conducted with the support of the Europol agency, uncovered the apparent counterfeiting operation and led to the arrest of the 34-year-old suspect in Pristina, Europol said in a statement.
The man was an employee of the North Macedonian Interior Ministry, Europol said, adding that authorities also seized "counterfeit money production machines, thousands of assembled coins, rings and core blanks" at several locations in North Macedonia.
Eurojust, the EU's criminal justice cooperation agency, said in a statement that the man was "suspected of producing around 2 million counterfeit 2 euro coins that were to be put into circulation in the Kosovo economy".
According to the authorities, Kosovo is facing an epidemic of counterfeit coins worth millions of euros. The country is not part of the eurozone, the EU's currency union, but adopted the euro as its currency in 2002. | BGNES
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