Police have recently uncovered one of the biggest counterfeit moneymaking and trafficking cases in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, involving fake banknotes with a total face value of more than 200 million yuan (US$24.7 million).

They have also arrested a total of 13 suspects and confiscated some equipment used to make the fake money, sources with the local police said yesterday.

"This is a typical case of producing counterfeit money with hi-tech machines," Xiao Jianhua, spokesman for the Huizhou Bureau of Public Security, said in an interview with China Daily yesterday.

According to Xiao, the suspects were knowledgeable in using printing and other technical systems to make counterfeit money.

The suspects have been detained for interrogation, Xiao said.

On May 8, police officers in the city of Huizhou in the eastern part of Guangdong began investigating the case after receiving a report from the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Public Security that an alleged counterfeiting ring was producing fake money in the city.

They immediately made arrangements for an investigation around Nankeng Village of Huiyang District in the city, believed to be the site for the production of counterfeit money.

After a two-week investigation, police seized eight suspects from a counterfeit moneymaking ring on May 24 when they were allegedly trafficking fake money out of the city. On the same day, police confiscated fake banknotes all with the face value of 100 yuan, totalling 62 million yuan (US$7.6 million), as well as equipment for making the banknotes. Three more suspects were later arrested by Huizhou police in Changde of Central China's Hunan Province.

Further investigation allegedly showed that the ring used another site to produce counterfeit money in Fangcun District of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province.

Guangzhou police seized another two suspects in the middle of June, after receiving a report from Huizhou police, and confiscated a large sum of fake banknotes with the value of more than 60 million yuan (US$7.4 million).

The fake banknotes were sold at a low price, with each 100-yuan note selling at 2 yuan (25 US cents) in the Pearl River Delta areas.

It is so far one of the biggest counterfeit moneymaking and trafficking cases in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.

Guangdong police have vowed to make more efforts to crack down on such cases since the province has become one of the major hotspots for producing fake money.

In 2004, over half of fake money seized by police in the nation was produced in Guangdong, official statistics show.

Editor: Yan