The bill to nationalise currency printing company Valores de Sudamerica (CVS), formerly Ciccone, was passed yesterday in the Chamber of Deputies. This means the state will now control the printing of money in Argentina. The bill was passed last night after nine hours of debate. It received 145 votes in favour, 77 against and four abstentions.

The law declares the printing of money a matter of state interest and awarded President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner the power of executive intervention in money printing.

The bill’s success owes to its widespread support across political parties. As well as receiving support from Kirchnerist allies such as the Frente Cívico Santiagueño, Nuevo Encuentro and Movimiento Popular Neuquino, many opposition members also voted in favour. These included members from traditional opposition parties Proyecto Sur, Unión Peronista and Frente Cívico de Cordoba.

However there was also much criticism of the bill, focused on the allegations of corruption surrounding vice-president Amandou Boudou. Boudou is accused of using his influence to favour the former owners of CVS, which was saved from bankruptcy in 2010 by Investment company The Old Fund. Critics claim Boudou’s links with The Old Fund are suspect and the current investigation into the deal brokered between them is still underway.

A key aspect of the investigation aims to uncover the owners of the Old Fund. Yesterday, opposition members both accused the government of trying to cover up the Boudou-Ciccone scandal with this law and also lambasted the government for taking over control of a company without knowing this information.

“Those who vote for this bill will be voting blindly,” said Deputy Patricia Bullrich from Unión Por Todos. “They could be voting for a company paid for with money from drug trafficking or money laundering.”

Frente para la Victoria deputy Agustín Rossi Rossi spoke out against these views last night, saying there had been many cases where businesses had “sought to disrupt democracy with accusations of corruption.”

Many supporters of expropriation spoke out in favour of the bill, claiming the ongoing investigation into Boudou and Ciccone was not relevant to the nationalisation of money printing.

Leader of opposition group Proyecto Sur, Fernando “Pino” Solanas said expropriation “would not interfere with the current judicial investigation.”

For more information on the history of Ciccone, CVS and ‘Boudougate’ read our in-depth news feature

Peru has surpassed Colombia to become the world’s main producer of counterfeit notes despite the arrest of one of the alleged main counterfeiters Joel Quispe Rodríguez, according to Peruvian and US officials.

Peru now accounts for 17% of all counterfeit dollars in the United States according to Brian Leary a spokesperson for the US Secret Service. So far this year US$17m in false currency has been confiscated.

The change is a startling escalation considering the US only detected the counterfeit bills coming from Peru in 2003. The Andean nation has surpassed even Colombia, which was once responsible for producing 43% of US counterfeit dollars according to InSight, an organisation which studies organised crime in Latin America.

Peruvian police believe the Quispe Rodríguez family is responsible for the bulk of the counterfeiting industry.

Many Peruvians believed that with the arrest of Joel Quispe Rodríguez, who was arrested last year, the illegal industry would falter. However, Police suspect his brother, Raul Quispe Rodríguez, has taken over the operation of the fake money.

After an investigation that lasted several months, police said they arrested two more members of the family. They also seized nearly US$7m worth in counterfeit bills including Euros and Peruvian soles.

On the 2nd August, police seized US$2.3m that they believe was also produced by the Quispe Rodríguez family and headed for the US in tourist souvenirs.

César Cortijo, director of the Peruvian police criminal investigation, said most of the money is being exported.

“We found notebooks with drawings, to make [the bills] look like souvenirs. They had a compartment to hide dollars wrapped in carbon paper to make them invisible to x-rays,” said Cortijo to BBC Mundo.

Peru’s surging production of good quality fake bills has attracted international organised crime, according to a police officer who spoke to the newspaper, Peru21. Peruvian police arrested a Mexican man at Lima’s international airport who carried US$520,000 in false bills. They believe he is connected to the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel.

Peru’s government has vowed to strike “heavy blows” against money launderers working in the country, after admitting it had failed make an impact so far.

Sergio Schoklender, lawyer and powerful representative of the Madres de Plaza De Mayo Foundation, resigned from his post the day before yesterday amid accusations of irregular spending of public funds. This scandal is a particularly hard hit to President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

“This is an explosion in the relationship with the Madres,” a member of Fernández de Kirchner’s inner circle told LA NACION last night. “The first human rights organization that helped the government is under investigation for corruption of public funds for housing for poor people - imagine.”

According to official information from the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, there are almost six thousand social houses projected and under construction across the country, as well as 19 health centers.

Yesterday, the Civic Coalition re-requested the Financial Information Unit (FIU) investigate Schoklender for laundering public funds to buy two properties. Last year National Deputy, Elsa Quiroz, made the first inquiry to the FIU but according to her, there was no response.

Quiroz told Clarín that “the use of public funds, either by a person or an association, deserves the necessary controls. I am not sure that these transactions have been made with those [public] funds, but we did find irregularities.”

The head of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini has yet to comment on the situation.

The government has announced that $100 notes will continue to be imported from Brazil throughout 2011. It is estimated that between $1bn and $1.2bn is the amount needed to avoid a repetition of recent money shortages.

Over the last two months there has been a drastic shortage of high level currency across the country, leading to long queues at cash points and people being unable to withdraw money from their accounts.

The Argentine government turned to Brazil for assistance in quickly producing $100 bills to counter the problem. The notes which have been printed in Brazil bear some visible differences to those printed in Argentina, but are accepted on an equal basis.

Alongside the help being received from the Brazilian mint, the Argentine government is trying to secure a new printing facility within the country so that it can be self-dependent. Old printing machines are said to be being brought from their neighbours, as the Brazilian printing industry has recently updated their technology and installed new machinery, according to La Nación.

Another scheme introduced to counter the shortage, requires all businesses to offer the option of card payments. This not only reduces the need for hard currency but also counters the thriving black economy by involving more transparent transactions. However, this scheme has suffered from delays in its implementation and is yet to be enforced.

An alternative option put forward by the opposition and economy experts is to introduce a new note of higher value, such as $200. This would be a clear sign of inflation and has been rejected by the government so far.

Looking further forward, both countries would like to be able to provide money printing services to other countries suffering from similar circumstances, a possibly discussed with the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, in her recent visit to Buenos Aires.

The recent decision of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to pay US$6.6bn of the Argentine debt to the IMF with the currency reserve of the Central Bank has been strongly controversial. After countering her decision, the bank’s president, Martin Redrado, was fired, only to be reinstated by the decision of a judge.

Judge María Jose Sarmiento was also critical of the Argentine president for not running the decision to use the money through Congress, as is the norm when issues of the currency reserve arise.

The Argentina Independent hit the streets on a sunny January afternoon to gauge the response of Argentines to the recent saga.

Marcelo Seba, 33, Buenos Aires

What I didn’t like is the attitude of Cristina towards the head of the Central Bank. To make a decision like this you have to go through the process planned by the constitution. Writing a decree is not enough when making a decision like she did. The Central Bank’s president is in charge of dealing with the bank reserves. In that case, he is the only one who can decide what to do. If he thought that the money was not to be used for the debt, Cristina had to accept it.

Omar Sanchez, 46, Quilmes

It is a new example of the authoritarianism of this government who want to get hold of money that does not belong to them. The president can’t use the public’s money without explaining to us what she is going to use it for. Then she has to ask the population if they agree to use the currency reserve to pay the debt back. We are talking about a lot of money here. The way Cristina acted makes me think, once again, she’s got something to hide.

Cecilia Camilli, 25, Vicente López

We have to pay the debt. It is not right to owe someone money and never pay back. I don’t understand really well if the situation is good or bad. I still don’t think this fund has to be used to pay the debt because the country is not doing very well and people need this money. Cristina also should have asked Congress before sacking the president of the Central Bank. If this country has institutions, we have to respect them.

Nestor Mercolli, 51, Buenos Aires Province

Cristina has got resources to starts paying the debt back but instead she is using the people’s money to do it. That’s not in her interest because she is now criticised about it. When the right wing is already losing ground, she makes the situation worse. Socialism is already really important in Latin America, with Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Can you imagine if Argentina, one of the biggest countries of the continent, would turn like that too? All this is happening because of an interview published in Clarín anyway.

Eustaquia Gomez, 62, Buenos Aires Province

Cristina didn’t have to use that money. She didn’t have to sack the Central Bank’s president either. He has been elected to care for this money and make decisions about what to do with it. He had to stay until the end of his mandate like any politician. Why do we choose politicians if the president doesn’t respect their status? It looks like the president didn’t respect anything here, she didn’t even bother asking Congress to approve her decisions.

Photos by Beatrice Murch

A Brazilian medicine student was today freed from his alleged captors on the brink of giving them US$100,000. Police stormed Banco do Brasil in Buenos Aires city and prevented him from making the withdrawal.

He then claimed that he had not been kidnapped, and was in fact paying a debt. Buenos Aires police are keeping him and his supposed assailants in custody until he makes a “clear statement”.

His family had remarkably denied any possibility of a kidnapping, but his uncle still went to the Brazilian consulate in Buenos Aires to report his disappearance.

He alleged that his nephew was made to ask his father, a wealthy businessman, for the large amount of money to be deposited in his account.

On receiving this tip-off, the police began to monitor calls between the man and his father, and figured out that the money was to be withdrawn on Wednesday 25^th February, at approximately midday.

On entering the bank, the police arrested the Brazilian, 25, as well as a Uruguayan, 34, and an Argentine, 37.

The story took another strange twist when one of the captors said that he both lived and studied on the same course as his alleged victim.

For most visitors to the country, the most interesting thing about Argentine banknotes is their ability to drive taxi drivers and shop keepers to apoplexy when trying to change anything larger than a $20 bill. However the faces they portray reveal a colourful journey through the good, the bad and the ugly of Argentina’s early post-independence history.

2 pesos: Bartolomé Mitre – the journalist

Mitre was president of the republic between 1862-68 and is credited with uniting the nation after the divisions of the Juan Manuel de Rosas era. An outspoken critic of Rosas, he spent 15 years in exile from 1837, from where he used his position as a journalist to denounce the regime.

On his return to Argentina he became governor of Buenos Aires province before taking on the top job. In power he reduced the influence of the powerful rural landowners known as caudillos, and oversaw the start of Argentina’s economic development by organising the country’s finances and encouraging large scale immigration from Europe.

His influence lives on today through the famous La Nación newspaper and the Argentine Academy of History, both of which he founded.

5 pesos: José de San Martín – the liberator

The son of a Spanish administrator in the north of the country, San Martín went to Spain at the age of six where he was educated and entered service in the Spanish army, serving in Morocco. After Napoleon’s usurpation of King Ferdinand VII, he worked for the Seville junta before changing sides and joining the patriot struggle in South America. He put this about-turn down to ‘answering the call of his native land’.

He assumed control of the Argentine army and was a leading figure in liberating the nation from Spanish supremacy. His next campaign across the Andes to liberate Chile and Perú was the stuff of legends and is rated amongst the most difficult and daring military expeditions ever attempted. He triumphantly met his fellow icon of the South American independence struggle, Simón Bolívar, at Guayaquil in what is now Ecuador on 26th July 1822.

However he soon withdrew from public life, disillusioned with the scheming and anarchy of the post independence era, living out the rest of his life in exile in Europe, where he died in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1850

10 pesos: Manuel Belgrano – flag waver

Belgrano is best known for two things; for being the designer of Argentina’s sky-blue and white flag, and for having a battle cruiser named after him which was infamously sunk in the Falklands/Malvinas conflict.

What is less well known is that he was commander-in-chief of the Argentine patriot forces in the early days of the independence struggle against Spain. Belgrano had his military baptism in the defence of Buenos Aires against the British invasions of 1806-07.

When the Argentines rose up against Spanish rule in 1810, he joined the ruling junta before leading the army. He notched up famous victories over the Spaniards at Tucumán and Salta. However a series of reverses saw him cede command to San Martín in 1814.

20 pesos: Juan Manuel de Rosas – the dictator

Born into a family of wealthy landowners, Rosas was a politician from the caudillo tradition. Elected governor of Buenos Aires province in 1829, he was a strong opponent of Gen. Juan Lavalle, president of the republic. He espoused federalist ideas which favoured giving greater power to the provinces. He enjoyed the support of landowners and merchants as well as tacit British approval.

He left office in 1832 only to return in 1835 with greatly increased personal power, which he used to rule the province as a dictator, displaying centralist tendencies which belied his federalist pretensions. His feared secret police were used to suppress dissension and Rosas ordered that his portrait be hung in public places, in a display of his personal control.

His involvement in neighbouring Uruguay’s internal affairs led to France blockading the port of Buenos Aires. Rosas was finally removed after his defeat at the Battle of Caseros by Gen. Justo José de Urquiza in 1852. He spent the rest of his life exiled in England, where he died in 1877.

50 pesos: Faustino Domingo Sarmiento – the educator

One of the most revered presidents in Argentina’s history, Sarmiento was the first civilian to be elected to the position, in 1868.

An outspoken critic of Rosas, he was exiled to Chile in 1940. Sarmiento wrote a multitude of books including the influential Facundo, a fierce denunciation of the gaucho caudillo, Facundo Quiroga. Having studied educational methods in Europe and the US, he set great store by developing Argentina’s education system, introducing primary and secondary schooling for a largely illiterate population, which was to be the cornerstone of the country’s future progress.

Sarmiento also encouraged foreign investment into the country, a move which was to help drive Argentina’s growth into an economic powerhouse.

100 pesos: Julio Argentino Roca – the pioneer

Roca is a controversial figure for historians. For some he is the hero of the ‘Indian Wars’ which ended in 1879, responsible for opening up the vast pampas to settlement and economic development. To others he is responsible for the genocide of large swathes of Argentina’s indigenous population. His statue in the centre of Buenos Aires continues to be a focal point for indigenous protest.

At the culmination of his military career he entered politics, becoming president for six years from 1880. With the support of the National Autonomist Party, which was dominant at the time, Roca offered, ‘peace and efficient administration’.

His presidency oversaw a period of economic expansion, leading to inflation due to the oversupply of money in the economy. As British investors got cold feet, a financial crisis ensued which was ultimately to unseat him.

I bet you didn’t know there was such a wealth of history in your pocket!