Wednesday, September 1st, 2021
More than 50 million euros
Bundesbank exchanges dirty flood money
The Bundesbank usually receives around 40 million euros in damaged banknotes every year. This year, private individuals from the flood areas alone are submitting more than 50 million euros. This is often no job for people with sensitive noses.
Private individuals from the flood areas in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate as well as banks and savings banks have so far submitted more than 50 million euros in damaged cash to the Bundesbank for a refund.
The banknotes, which are often heavily contaminated with sludge, sewage and heating oil, are washed, dried and checked by specialists at the Bundesbank in Mainz so that the submitter can get their money back in fresh notes. Speed is of the essence: “The bank notes must be processed as quickly as possible before they clump together and become hard as concrete,” said Bundesbank board member Johannes Beermann at the analysis center for counterfeit money and damaged cash in Mainz.
Euro banknotes damaged in the flood disaster are dried in a commercially available tumble dryer at the Bundesbank. In contrast to normal laundry, one cycle takes around ten hours.
(Photo: picture alliance / dpa)
This is often no job for people with sensitive noses: The shrink-wrapped bundles sometimes smell disgusting when they are removed from the plastic film. Specialists carefully wash the bills, rid them of dirt, dry them, and then smooth them. Others check and count the bills. The service is free of charge for citizens.
The submitted sums have been registered and will be refunded. Two important conditions must be met: 50 percent of a banknote “plus one more snippet” must be present, as Beermann explained. In addition, it must not be counterfeit money. Counterfeiters who tried to smuggle flowers soiled with dirt on the Bundesbank had “no chance,” said Beermann.
Private individuals can submit the flood money to the Bundesbank, send it to their commercial bank or by post. The 51 million euros that have so far arrived in Mainz come from the Bundesbank branches in Cologne (25 million), Dortmund (12 million), Koblenz (10 million) and Saarbrücken (4 million). For comparison: Usually, 40 million euros arrive at the analysis center in an entire year.
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