Money fit to launder

GREAT inventions rarely work first time. In 1990 the Reserve Bank of Australia, the country's central bank, shipped an order of commemorative banknotes, among the first to be made from plastic film rather than paper, to Western Samoa. The Pacific islanders' excitement at their new two-tala notes soon turned to anger. Ink rubbed off the surface and smudged the portrait of Malietoa Tanumafili II, the revered o le ao o le malo, or head of state, in whose honour the notes had been issued.