More news is filtering through about the bond arrests in Italy. Britain’s Financial Times newspaper reports that Italian and US secret service agents now claim the $134 billion in seized “fake” bearer bonds on the Italian Swiss border at the beginning of the month were “the handiwork of the Italian Mafia.”

Still, there remain a number of glaring inconsistencies in the story.

1. Why did the mainstream media largely ignore what was either the biggest smuggling operation or the biggest counterfeit operation in history? Some (mainly European) newspapers began reporting on the story about a week ago. And Fox carried a report on the arrests. But as FT Alphaville put it last week, this is either an “odd little story – or perhaps and absolutely massive one – that has been completely overlooked.” We strongly suspect it’s the latter.

2. Why were the US authorities silent on the status of the bonds for so long? At first, it was reported that “the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones” (AsiaNews, June 8). Well over a week later, Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for the Treasury’s Bureau of Public Debt, said “Based on the photograph we’ve seen online, they are clearly fake. And not even good fakes.” If it was this easy to determine the bonds were fakes, why were the Italian authorities (who deal with US bond smuggling cases on a regular basis) so taken in? And why did it take so long for the Treasury to deny the bonds’ authenticity?

3. The official story now seems to be that this was the work of the Italian Mafia. But since when did the Italian mob employ Japanese bagmen? The two individuals caught with the bonds in a false bottom suitcase were carrying Japanese documents (although the Japanese foreign office as yet to confirm whether the men really were Japanese).

4. Why on earth did the Italian and US secret services, which reportedly track the bonds, let the two bagmen disappear? It seems that the Italian authorities have let the men go. And according to Takeshi Akamatsu, a Japanese foreign ministry press spokesman, Tokyo has no idea where the two men are.

5. Why would the Mafia, or anyone else, go to the trouble of printing up bonds that were “clearly fakes”? And why would they employ two Asian-looking men to smuggle these useless pieces of paper across the Swiss border on a well-known smuggling route? (Reuters reports that $800 million in US bonds have been seized in the Como area of Italy over the last two years.)

6. According to Bloomberg, there is no known existence of the alleged billion-dollar “Kennedy bonds.” This also defies logical explanation. Why would counterfeiters spend the time forging 249 “Federal Reserve Bonds” purportedly worth $500 million each and then go to all the trouble of forging separate “Kennedy bonds” securities with a $1 billion nominal value? Why not just forge 20 more “Federal Reserve Bonds.”

7. Why would anyone go to the trouble of forging $134 billion worth of bearer bonds in the first place? Why such a big amount? One theory seems to be that the Mafia was going to use the bonds to open up credit lines in a bank. But what bank demands a $134 billion guarantee? And surely any bank would go to the trouble to check the authenticity of the bonds before opening any credit lines.

As we’ve said before. This story doesn’t add up. It remains our suspicion that a massive cover-up is going on and that the real story has massive implication for the future of the US dollar.