Claim: Any US dollar printed before January 2021 will not be acceptable from January 2023.
There is no such announcement by the United States Government.
Full Text
On October 26, 2022, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced it had redesigned major naira notes and that the notes would be distributed starting from December 2022.
The new notes include N200, N500 and N1000. Mr Godwin Emefiele, the governor of the apex bank, explained that the initiative is to allow for control of the currency in circulation, manage inflation, and tackle counterfeiting.
The CBN’s plan has continued to elicit mixed reactions. As expected, many photos, videos, and texts have been shared widely on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. However, some of them are false.
One of such is a viral social media post stating that the United States government has set a deadline for the legal status of dollar notes printed before 2021.
DUBAWA observed that the post is currently being shared on Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and some blogs. Also, the exact report was posted on a prominent news site, Nairaland.
According to the post, dollar bills printed before 2021 will no longer be accepted as legal tender worldwide by January 2023. The policy was implemented to curb billions of illegal dollars in dollar bills in African countries.
Also, the report notes that the agreement was reached at a meeting held on November 2, 2022 between the United States Federal Reserve Bank, Office of the Comptroller of Currency, IMF, World Bank and Governors of Africa’s Central Banks.
The post further claimed that US President Joe Biden “has written to the British Government and European Union to tour (sic) the same line and redesign their currencies accordingly to frustrate those with ill-gotten money in US dollar, British Pound Sterling, and Euros.”
Some of these posts credit Reuters News as the source of their information.
Verification
DUBAWA did a keyword search on the official website of Reuters News to ascertain the veracity of the information and found there was nothing of such on the news agency’s website.
Also, there was no meeting between officials of the United States Federal Reserve Bank, Office of the Comptroller of Currency, IMF, World Bank and Governors of Africa’s Central Banks on November 2, 2022, as claimed by the author of the post.
A search on the official Twitter handle of the United States Federal Reserve showed that the day’s event was a press briefing by Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve of the United States. Other agencies/bodies mentioned in the report had no major meeting on the same day.
US dollar explained
The USD (United States Dollar) is the official currency of the United States of America. According to the information on the US government website, paper currency comes in seven denominations: $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100.
It is usually printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP). The Bureau is also responsible for redesigning money with new appearances and enhanced security features. No recent announcement on the Bureau’s website of any currency redesign exists.
Meanwhile, in 2013, the United States Department of the Treasury selected the $10 note for redesign, highlighting security requirements as the primary drive.
Also, it was established that the Secretary of the Treasury makes the final decision on currency design as specified by the Second Legal Tender Act of July 11, 1862, and 12 USC 418.
It is also the duty of the Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence (ACD) Steering Committee to recommend a note for a redesign.
The ACD conducts due diligence for security features that can be used to deter counterfeiting. The ACD Committee consists of representatives from the Department of the Treasury, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the United States Secret Service.
A check on the US Currency Education Program revealed that “it is the US government policy that all designs of US currency remain legal tender, regardless of when they were issued. This policy includes all denominations of Federal Reserve notes, from 1914 to the present.”
A further check reveals that the United States dollar was first established as a world currency in the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944. The gold was the basis for the US dollar, and other currencies were pegged to the US dollar’s value. Hence linking the naira redesign to the supposed policy is baseless.
The United States central bank is known as the Federal Reserve System, not the *Federal Reserve Bank.* It performs five general functions to promote the effective operation of the US economy and, more generally, the public interest. There was no information on naira redesign from the Federal Reserve System from the supposed date of the meeting till the time of filing this report.
From the information available online, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has the following responsibilities: It charters, regulates and supervises all national banks, federal savings associations, federal branches, and foreign banks agencies.
It is also an independent bureau of the US Department of the Treasury, and the unit does not deal with the redesign of currency.
Conclusion
The report that the United States government is set to checkmate dollar stockpiles in Africa is false. There is no evidence to support the statement.
