A military cargo plane carrying new banknotes crashed near El Alto International Airport, killing 22 and injuring 37. Nearly $62 million in cash scattered across the city, triggering chaos as crowds gathered. Authorities have voided the bills and detained dozens.
Bolivian authorities are rushing to destroy the equivalent of $62 million worth of local currency bank notes that fell from the sky in the country’s deadly plane crash near El Alto International Airport on Friday afternoon, which killed at least 22 and injured around 37 people.
17 million banknotes scattered
The military cargo plane was filled with new bills for Bolivia’s central bank. Most of the victims were affected near the airport and were struck by the plane during the crash.
The deadly crash scattered nearly 17 million banknotes across the densely populated city of El Alto, central bank president David Espinoza said. The cash haul amounted to 423 million bolivianos, roughly amounting to $62 million.
People rushed to collect notes
People rushed to the area and tried to collect as many bills as possible, while authorities rushed to look for survivors and also burn the bank notes as fast as they could.
The central bank estimates about 30 per cent of the bills have been stolen from the crash site.
The area is now heavily deployed by police and military personnel as people were still scouring for bills in the early hours of Saturday.
“Our estimates suggest that at the peak of the conflict there were about 20,000 people” trying to collect the bank notes, Bolivia’s Vice Minister of Interior Order Hernan Paredes told local media. “There were vandal groups embedded, that’s why we detained 49 people.”
Poorest country of Latin America
Bolivia is one of the poorest countries of Latin America, which is facing one of the highest bouts of inflation recorded at an increase of 25 per cent last year. It recently cooled down to just 20 per cent as the newly elected President Rodrigo Paz tries to turn around the country’s strained public finances.
The notes were worth between 10 and 50 bolivianos which is equivalent to between $1.5 and $7 according to Bolivia’s official exchange rate, although they are worth roughly 30 per cent less in the black foreign currency market, which is the one most commonly used by Bolivians.
As a major action towards the bustle, the central bank in a statement said that it was canceling the validity of the notes, which can all be identified by a specific series printed on the bills.
Banks are still verifying that if a bill is valid by looking at the series or it is unlikely that ordinary vendors would verify the series printed on each bill that they take, especially because the money is legitimate and would pass a routine forgery check.
“The bills from the accident have been totally identified,” ASFI said in a statement. “Financial entities will proceed to retain any of them and report any holder to the relevant authorities if they try to introduce them into the system.”
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