Old notes worth Ksh7.4B now worthless, CBK says

Old notes worth Ksh7.4B now worthless, CBK says

Kenyans returned Ksh.209.7 billion worth of notes in the recently completed demonetization cycle.

According to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), the amount is equivalent to the return of 209.7 million individual Ksh.1000 notes over the four month period.

Addressing a press briefing on Wednesday, CBK Governor Dr. Patrick Njoroge said there were 217,047,000 pieces of the old Ksh. 1,000 note as at June 1.

By the end of September, 209,661,000 old notes had been returned with Dr, Njoroge revealing that over 7 million pieces were not exchanged and are now worthless.

“The value of money that did not come back is equivalent to the value lost during the Goldenberg case,” he said.

Njoroge termed the demonetization process as successful as he reiterated that the aim was to deal with illicit financial flows and counterfeits.

The Governor averred that CBK’s new anti-money laundering system will put to bed stories of people using illegally acquired cash to buy ‘big-ticket’ items such as cars.

He revealed that banks, forex bureaus, micro-finance institutions, money transfer and mobile money agents all followed the AML/CFT guidelines.

“3,172 suspicious transactions were flagged during the demonetisation period,” he noted.

Dr. Njoroge added that agencies such as the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), Financial Reporting Centre (FRC), and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) are continuing with relevant investigations.

The CBK boss also noted that the hypothesis that Kenyans are procrastinators and wait until the last minute was disapproved.

According to him, Kenyans will act properly when they know what is good for them.

He rubbished claims from critics that the demonetisation exercise did not go as planned saying:

“There was no impact on inflation. There was no queue of buyers of high-value assets to launder money – AML/ CFT measures were applied on the forex market, thus no impact on the exchange rate and there were few queues at banks.”

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