Guinean students arrested for spending authentic 500 € bill in France

A Guinean female student and her cousin were detained for 20 hours between Monday and Tuesday in France for trying to pay with a 500 € bill which was not a counterfeit.

At 3pm on Monday, Aissetou, a student who recently arrived in France to study law at a French university, went shopping with her cousin at a big supermarket called Leclerc in Douai.

After filling her trolley with stationaries, food and other items needed, she moved over to the counter to settle her bill. When she attempted to pay for her approximately 210 € purchase with a 500 € note, the cashier who hardly sees a customer pay with such a big sum did not bother to inspect the note. Suspecting it was counterfeit since it was coming from Africans, she siezed the note and called her boss.

The manager also in turn made no attempt to verify the money for himself as he says their detection machines are not 100% reliable. He declared that the money was fake knowing he did not perform any counterfeit detection tests and detained them on allegations of trying to pass counterfeit bills. He told them they had to wait and called the cops.

The cops arrived and took them aware in the glaring eyes of other customers. The police station did not possess a counterfeit detection device to determine the authenticity of the note so they had to remain behind bars until Tuesday before the bill was taken to the bank which deemed it “real".

What was thought to be a counterfeit bill turned out to be a legitimate bill, but the truth wasn't discovered until the two guineans has been mistakenly jailed.They were finally released without apology from either the officers nor the supermarket for publicly humiliating the African students.

Aissetou had recieved two notes of 500 euros from her dad before boarding the plane for France where she was to start her first year at the university to become a lawyer.

Knowing the various methodsavailable today for validating the authenticity of the note, how come a big supermarket like LeClerc does not have one which is 100% reliable. Why has Bank of France made 500 € bills which is an impossible mission spending it in France? Why haven't they removed it from circulation? Why did the cashier and the manager not follow the rules of properly checking to see if the money was the real deal before declaring it fake? Why didn't they just reject the note knowing the couldn't verify the authencity? How come a police station does not have a detecting device?

I hope that they will seek punitive damages for false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It's obvious they were suspected to be using phony money only because they a black.