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Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Der Spiegel: Federal auditors call for inventory of German gold reserves



October 24, 2012 by · Leave a Comment 

GATA

Thanks again to GATA’s friends Lars Schall and Peter Boehringer for the translation from German to English.

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Federal Court of Auditors Calls for Inventory of Gold Reserves

Germany owns the world’s second largest gold reserves, nearly 3,400 tons. Allegedly, that is.

In fact, the stored gold has never been checked for authenticity and weight. Now the Federal Court of Auditors has urged the Bundesbank to investigate the gold stocks abroad on a regular basis.

From Der Spiegel, Hamburg
Monday, October 22, 2012

http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/rechnungshof-fordert-bundesban…

BERLIN — The German gold is kept safely in the central bank vaults in Frankfurt am Main, New York, Paris, and London. So far nobody has actually verified this. The Federal Court of Auditors now is demanding from the Bundesbank a regular inspection and inventory of the huge gold reserves abroad. The auditors justify this in a report Monday to the Budget Committee of the Bundestag, noting the “high value of gold stocks.”

Moreover the report states that with regard to the German gold reserves stored at other central banks, there has never been a “physical inventory and examination of the authenticity and weight” by the Bundesbank itself or any other independent auditor. Indeed, there are numerous persistent conspiracy theories on the topic. According to these the US gold reserves in Fort Knox have been plundered a long time ago.


The Bundesbank has the second largest gold reserves in the world after the United States. By the end of 2011 they amounted to 3,396 tons, valued at 133 billion euros. After the gold rally, the current value should even be about 142 billion euros. The Bundesbank stores the ingots in vaults in Frankfurt am Main and three storage places abroad: at the US Federal Reserve in New York, the French National Bank in Paris, and the Bank of England in London.

The Federal Court of Auditors would determine on behalf of the Bundestag if the Bundesbank is scrutinizing the gold stocks stored abroad. The Bundesbank’s longstanding practice to rely only on written confirmation regarding the gold ingots from foreign central banks is controversial.

The Federal Court recommends that the Bundesbank renegotiate the authorization for physical examination of the reserves held in the three foreign held reserves. According to the report, the Bundesbank has started implementing this recommendation. Also, the Bundesbank has supposedly decided to transfer 50 tonnes of gold held with the New York Fed to Germany over the next three years for thorough examination.

Several parts of the report have been blacked out. The report does not clarify exactly how much gold is stored with which foreign central bank.

The inventory held at the Bundesbank headquarters consists, according to the report, of 82,857 ingots, which are predominantly stored in sealed containers containing 50 ingots each, which are kept in four separately locked vaults. Part of this inventory (6,183 ingots) is, according to the report, stored on open shelves in a separate vault — the so-called Gold Chamber. Concerning the safeguarding of the gold, the report states, “The vault’s external locking mechansim is a double mechanism. The vault’s internal locking and the Gold Chamber are equipped with a triple locking mechanism.”

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