Italian anti-mafia prosecutors Friday ordered the seizure in Switzerland of fake US Treasury bonds with a face value of $6.0 trillion (7.9 trillion euros) - or over a third of US national debt. The bonds were found hidden in false compartments in three safety deposit boxes transferred in 2007 from Hong Kong to Zurich and eight arrests have also been made in Italy as part of the investigation, prosecutors said.
Investigators said that members of a criminal network had tried to use the bonds in emerging markets or give them to banks in exchange for money. The operation was "the biggest for this type of investigation," Giovanni Colangelo, the head of the prosecutor's office in the city of Potenza in southern Italy which is leading the investigation, told reporters.
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