This book is about the most precious piece of paper we know, about bank-notes. Modern life would be unthinkable without them. Yet, the general public is kept very much in the dark about how they are made or who makes them. It is rarely known, for example, that despite America's technical Prowess all dollar bills are printed exclusively on German high-security printing presses using secret Swiss special inks, or that the phony 100 dollar bills, the so-called supernotes may well be printed in a top-secret printing works located just north of the white House and run by the CIA - although the US government is blaming the rogue government of North Korea for counterfeiting these bills. This book is finally lifting the veil on an industry used to absolute secrecy. It recounts the stories of a British banknote printer who, fearing the loss of his customer, informed the Egyptian secret service that the securities printing machinery the Egyptians were about to buy was of Jewish origin; of a private printer who convinced the Polish central bank that it should destroy a complete series of new, perfect banknotes which had been printed by a competitor, or of an Argentinean high-security printer who came to print genuine fake bank-notes for Zaire and Bahrain as a result of two sting operations, which smell of the Belgian and French secret service.

Moneymakers, by offering a detailed view of the banknote industry and its modus operandi, removes the industry's carefully imposed shroud of secrecy. This book has been researched over a five-year period in Europe, the USA, and Latin America. The book is based exclusively on personal Interviews and confidential mate4rial normally not accessible tooutsiders. There were attempts to stop this research project.

Klaus W. Bender has peered behind the scenes of the Secret and exclusive world of the moneymakers. - Financial Times Deutschland, 2004

The errors and pitfalls at the birth of the euro make Bender's research so unnerving. - Suddeutsche Zeitung, 2004

Bender does not mince his words when he describes abuses - and there are lots of them. - Neue Zurcher Zeitung, 2004

This book is about the most precious "piece of paper" we know, about banknotes and about the industry that makes them. We have banknotes in our hands daily. Modern life would be unthinkable without them, yet we know nothing about how they are made or who makes them. This secrecy is regularly explained as "legitimate" special security for a very special product. But it also has to do with the unusual, highly politicized structure of the market in which central banks, as well as state and private banknote printers, operate. The armaments industry immediately comes to mind. This obsession with secrecy, however, seems out of place in the era of the internet. After all, banknote printing involves the massive use - and often waste - of taxpayers' money. This is the first book offering an in-depth view of the banknote industry and its modus operandi. The only known former attempt to reveal this story was by an American author (Terry Bloom: The Brotherhood of Money. The Secret World of Banknote Printers, BNR Press, Port Clinton, Ohio 1983). The edition of that book was bought up - straight from the printing presses - by two prominent Swiss representatives of the industry because the public was not supposed to get an inside view of the business. Today Bloom's book is hard to find even at dealers specialized in old books. An American dealer in 2002 had one copy on offer for 150 Dollars. MONEYMAKERS has been researched over a five-year period in Europe, the USA and Latin America. The book is based exclusively on personal interviews and confidential material normally not accessible to outsiders. There were attempts to stop this research project. Many witnesses interviewed spoke under condition of strict confidentiality for fear of reprisals by their employers. As a rule therefore, the author refrained from verbatim quotes and, as far as possible, tried to confirm every piece of information by two independent sources.