The National Bank of Kazakhstan acknowledged the error but did not abandon plans to start putting the banknotes into circulation from November 15. The ratio of 'correct and graphically erroneous' banknotes in circulation would be 20 to 80%. According to the head of the National Bank, Anvar Saidenov, a complete gradual replacement of these banknotes with ones without the grammatical error is possible within a year and a half.
But the deputies did not agree with this approach. They decided to send an appeal to the President of Kazakhstan asking not to allow the erroneous banknotes into circulation. Deputy Tokhtar Aubakirov even stated that their release 'can be considered sabotage.' What offended the deputies most was that the error was made in the Kazakh-language inscription. The National Bank could not correctly write its own name.
'These banknotes should be sold to numismatists to recoup the money spent on their production,' proposed deputy Yerasyl Abylkasymov. 'The heads of the National Bank who allowed this have very high salaries, let them return the money, and if they don't, it will be like embezzlement on an especially large scale.' The National Bank of Kazakhstan does not disclose the amounts spent on the development and production of the new money. It is only known that two-thirds of the banknotes were printed in Switzerland and only one-third in Kazakhstan.
Money with errors appears in circulation not so rarely. In November last year, the National Bank of the Philippines announced that it had issued a series of 100-peso banknotes with a typo in the name of the country's president. These banknotes immediately became a numismatic rarity. Currently, the value of such a banknote on eBay is five times its face value, with demand exceeding supply. And in the US, an encyclopedia has even been published devoted to errors on American banknotes, of which there have been about fifty over the entire history of the dollar.
Money with typos also occurred in Russian history. The most famous were the Russian counterfeit money issued by the French in 1811. These assignats (most often in denominations of 25 and 50 rubles) became quite widespread. Given that the majority of the population was illiterate and mainly paid attention to the numerical values of banknotes, the typos were not noticed quickly. For example, instead of the words 'государственная ассигнация' (state assignation), 'государственная ассинация' was printed. In some banknotes, the word 'халячий' appears instead of 'ходячий' (current). After the war, the Russian government withdrew French counterfeits from circulation totaling 70 million rubles. And in 1921, the Soviet Republic, among other new money, issued banknotes of 5,000 rubles. The famous slogan printed on them, 'Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!' (Workers of the world, unite!), contained a typo in the word 'пролетарии'.
Sonya Klimyuk.
Gazeta.Ru er="0">