Klaus Bender

In 1970, Bender left FESt in order to become a journalist, a move he had planned for a long time. Initially, he reported from Tokyo on Japanese economic affairs as a freelance journalist for about 20 German and Swiss newspapers but soon was hired by Der Spiegel, Germany's most prominent weekly magazine, and simultaneously by Handelsblatt, one of Germany's leading economic dailies, as a freelance (economic) writer with a fixed retainer fee. In 1972, upon invitation from the board of publishers, Bender joined Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Germany's leading daily (conservative) paper. He now reported on an exclusive basis for FAZ on politics, economics, and culture in the Asian region. Assignments by FAZ sent him to all countries of East and Southeast Asia, with the exception of war-torn Indochina. Highlights were trips to mainland China (repeatedly), to North Korea, and to the Soviet Far East. All at that time were regions still closed to visitors from the West.

After 14 years in Japan, Bender in 1980 asked for a transfer back to Europe. He was reassigned as economics correspondent of FAZ in Rome, covering Italy and selected countries around the Mediterranean Basin.[1] Although Bender considered the years passed in Italy as particularly happy and enriching, the fall of the Wall in Berlin induced him to ask in 1992, for a transfer to Eastern Europe. As economics correspondent of FAZ for Eastern and Southeastern Europe, he now accompanied the countries in the Prague-Bucharest-Belgrade triangle on their painful road of transition from Soviet oppression to a free market system and parliamentary democracy.

In the year 2000 Bender asked to be relieved of his duties as a full-time reporter in order to have more time for writing a non-fiction book about the arcane international high security printing industry that prints our banknotes, passports, and credit cards. However, he remained affiliated with FAZ as a reporter for specialized topics. In view of the upcoming common European currency, Bender as early as 1996 had started collecting material for a book on this subject even though frequent travelling for his newspaper made this additional task very difficult. As one result of this research, Bender in 2000, broke in FAZ the story of the misprint of more than 300 million pieces of 100-euro banknotes by Germany's high security printer Giesecke & Devrient.[1] Bender's story went around the world, forcing the Munich-based company to recall the affected banknotes from the European Central Bank, and adding the missing security feature at an estimated additional cost of 15 million euro. Later it was Bender, who with several pieces published by FAZ, for the first time publicly denounced the shocking events surrounding the privatization of Bundesdruckerei, Berlin. This highly reputed German state banknote printer, because of the greed and incompetence of the people involved in the privatization process, was brought to the brink of collapse. It was one of the biggest economic scandals in post-war Germany.