According to the Mint, the new Mutilated Coin Policy
was put in place in 2004 “to assist with managing the risk to the integrity of our currency from the importation of large volumes of mutilated coins”.
In Treasury’s 2004 annual report,
it notes that in 2003-04, the Mint and the Australian Federal Police “undertook an investigation of mutilated coins that were returned to the Mint for reimbursement”.
“No conclusions were made as to whether the coins were counterfeit but processes regarding return of mutilated coin were reviewed,” the report said. Under the revised policy, the Mint began paying scrap metal value for mutilated coins, effectively killing off the coin importation business overnight.
“Years ago I shipped coins into Australia in crates,” said Mr Shahar. “Australia was the first country to block it, because Treasury didn’t want to pay, so they were looking for a way out. It’s a program with no participants, because it costs more to ship the coins than they’re worth.”
Then in 2014, the Reserve Bank followed suit. Under the
RBA’s Damaged Banknotes Facility, financial institutions can send in damaged notes that are badly damaged, contaminated or less than 80 per cent complete for assessment.
But the policy change, instituted without warning, changed the claim requirements to specify that the facility was “only offered to members of the public who have unwittingly come into possession of damaged banknotes or those whose banknotes are accidentally damaged, with the aim of ensuring that they do not face financial hardship”.
In other words, anyone carrying on the importation of damaged banknotes as a commercial enterprise — a vanishingly small group of which Mr Shahar is one of the only members — was arbitrarily frozen out.
Under the new policy, if a claim is rejected, the banknotes are destroyed. Mr Shahar says the RBA has “stolen” something like $100 million from him in this way.
“The policy is one of legalised theft as they can deny a claim and keep the money,” he said. “There is no law against the importation of damaged currency. It’s only a policy, it’s not a law. By law, all Australian currency is legal tender. There is no devaluation, [even for] a coin which has been put through a metal processing plant accidentally.”
Under Australian law, it is a crime to “intentionally deface, disfigure, mutilate or destroy any coin or paper money that is lawfully current in Australia”. It is also a crime to “sell or offer to sell a coin or paper money that is lawfully current in Australia and that has been defaced, disfigured or mutilated, knowing it to have been defaced, disfigured or mutilated”.
