A Hunan province native has been charged with circulating counterfeit currency after more than 830,000 yuan was found in his possession as the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong intensified their crackdown on fake yuan notes.

In Taiwan, police said they had seized fake banknotes totaling 100 million yuan after smashing a syndicate that printed the counterfeit currency this week. They arrested six people on Wednesday, too.

Among those arrested is a 41-year-old man surnamed Hui, the suspected leader of the syndicate.

Taiwan police intensified its crackdown after a couple of Taiwan financial institutions received three counterfeit yuan notes on Jan 5 and 12 from businessmen who had returned from the mainland.

Taiwan police had been notified, or tipped, about fake yuan notes last May.

On the mainland, officials said Xiong Duocheng, 56, was hired to transport fake notes from Shantou in Guangdong province to Zhejiang province at the end of October.

Xiong was presented before a court in Yiwu, Zhejiang on Wednesday, prosecutors said yesterday. It is the first fake HD-series 100-yuan-note case in the province, the China News Service said yesterday.

Fake banknotes, starting with HD90, have been found in more than 10 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities since the end of December.

Transporting fake banknotes totaling more than 200,000 yuan could fetch a person life imprisonment.

In Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, police said on Wednesday they had busted three gangs, seized 4.44 million yuan fake notes, and arrested seven suspects from the end of December to the middle of this month.

In Hong Kong, police confirmed that the counterfeit banknotes seized in the special administrative region are from the HD series.

(China Daily January 16, 2009)