The company supposedly involved in the deal, which was to take place by Thanksgiving, was an actual Skadden client, but the acquisition was fictitious, officials said.
Some of the money was given away as gifts, and from $300 million to $350 million is untraceable either because no loan records were kept or the names of the borrowers were fictitious, officials have said.
In some instances in the case announced yesterday, the ring solicited people with previously damaged cars, who then claimed that they had been damaged in fictitious accidents, officials said.
Some of the civilians were false claimants who had allowed their names to be used on fictitious claims, the officials said.
Rather than counterfeit, they were what officials call fictitious, printed in 6,000 units of $1 billion each, a denomination that does not exist and the equivalent of $3 bills, American officials said.
Since April, the Socialist party in Andalusia, the largest region in Spain, has also been shaken by an inquiry into whether party officials provided fictitious early-retirement packages to friends and family members.
The Socialists, however, have also been embroiled in several scandals, particularly in their stronghold of Andalusia, Spain's largest region, where prosecutors have accused some local officials of paying fictitious early retirement benefits to relatives and friends.
'It was a whole system and an entire team of which Jacques Chirac was the chief that failed us.' Delanoë said that Gaullist party officials were given fictitious jobs as council staff that had cost ratepayers €1.2 million in city council salaries.
The other options were: "linking the official to a fictitious plot against General Torrijos," "leaking information on drug trafficking to the press," "linking his removal to negotiations over the future status of the Panama Canal," and "secretly encouraging powerful groups in Panama to raise the issue" of his corruption.
The official reportedly awarded "fictitious and phantom contracts" for equipment — including 12 helicopters, four jets, and ammunition — with the bogus deals amounting to the $2 billion sum.
One of the alleged "fictitious employees" was a full-time official in Mr Chirac's parliamentary constituency office in Correze, 300 miles from the French capital.
