In continuation of the topic "How much gold is in the world", let's find out where the countries of the world keep their gold in general and how much they can have.
The Bank of England responded with a refusal to the demand of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to return to the country 15 tons of Venezuelan gold stored in the Bank of England. The Times reported this, citing its own sources. At the same time, the British authorities referred to the need for some kind of anti-money laundering procedure. They supposedly need to find out what exactly the money from the sale of gold bars worth about $ 550 million will be spent on.
"The Bank of England," the newspaper writes, "has concerns that Mr. Maduro will sell gold and use the proceeds for his own benefit." Although it is clear that the head of state cannot do something similar with the country's gold reserve, even if he suddenly wanted to.
Venezuela's attempts to repatriate gold reserves were first reported by Reuters. According to his sources, the president argued his request with fears that, as a result, the country's gold would fall under international sanctions. Venezuela, whose economy is experiencing a severe crisis and hyperinflation, is already cut off from international markets, and its officials are under US and EU sanctions. Recently, the sanctions were extended by the Donald Trump administration, and then by the European Union.
The pressure of the US and the West on Venezuela began in 1998, when the people's leader Hugo Chavez came to power in this oil-rich country. He declared an independent course and challenged the dictates of Washington. In 2013, after the death of Chavez, his policy as president was continued by Nicolas Maduro. However, under the blows of sanctions and the economic war unleashed against the obstinate republic in Venezuela, the crisis aggravated, the state debt increased, and the situation of the population worsened.
Others have been fools too
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The example of Western banks shamelessly pocketing gold from other countries is far from new. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the French government, fearing an invasion by German troops, exported a significant part of the country's gold reserves to the United States. But after the war, the Americans began to drag out the return process. Then the determined President Charles de Gaulle in 1965 collected all the paper dollars that he could - one and a half billion in cash - and sent them to the United States, offering American President Lyndon Johnson to exchange them at the official rate, $ 35 per ounce of gold. And most importantly, Paris insisted that the gold bars belonging to him would not be stored in the basements of the Federal Bank of New York, but would move to their homeland.
Several years ago, Germany and Holland tried to reclaim their gold reserves. The German gold reserve is the second in the world after the American one - 3400 tons, which at market value corresponds to about 140 billion euros. All this gold was officially purchased on the stock exchanges in New York and London, where it remained - "in trust." It turned out that approximately 45% of Germany's gold reserves (about 1,500 tons of the precious metal) were stored in the US Federal Reserve System, another 450 tons - in the UK. When, two years ago, the Bundestag deputies counted how much gold is located directly in Germany, they were quite surprised, having counted only a little over 1000 tons.
Some explain exactly this the mysterious obedience of Berlin in relation to Washington, which is practicing its "golden blackmail".
Where is the gold of Russia?
In August 1914, the Russian Empire occupied a leading position in the world - its gold reserves amounted to 1 billion and 695 million rubles, which equaled 1,311 tons of the precious metal. But during the war, England had to guarantee the return of the war loans granted to England. After the war, the size of Russia's gold reserves was estimated at 1101 million rubles. In August 1918, most of it, 505 tons of precious metal, was captured by the army of Admiral Kolchak. By the way, while the admiral was in charge of it, the amount of precious metal, in addition to military expenditures, decreased by 182 tons, the disappearance of which is still a mystery.
In 1918, in connection with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, the RSFSR sent 98 tons of gold to Germany. Then, at fabulous prices, 60 steam locomotives were purchased from England and Switzerland. They cost the country about 200 tons of gold (!). According to the historian and writer Arsen Martirosyan, in the same years in Swiss banks, Lenin's associates opened accounts for fabulous sums at that time. For example, in the name of Dzerzhinsky, a deposit was opened in the amount of 85 million Swiss francs, in the name of Lenin - for 75 million, in the name of Zinoviev - for 80 million, in the name of Trotsky - for 90 million! All these contributions appeared during the period of Dzerzhinsky's foreign voyage, who was accompanied by a personal representative of Yakov Sverdlov by the name of Avanesov.
By 1923, the country's gold reserves were only 400 tons and continued to melt, in 1928 it was already 150 tons. However, under Stalin, a rapid rise in gold mining began - up to 320 tons per year, thanks to which in 1941 the gold reserve of the USSR amounted to 2800 tons - the second place in the world.
Thanks to this, the Soviet Union was able to pay the United States for supplies under the Lend-Lease during World War II and had the means to recover from military losses. But as a result of the reign of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev, the country's gold reserves almost dried up. In 1991, it was only 290 tons. It was only when Vladimir Putin became Russian President that the country began to rapidly accumulate the precious metal again. Over the past six years, the largest buyer of gold has been the Central Bank of the Russian Federation; in 2017, Russia increased its reserves by 224 tons and, overtaking China, ranked fifth in the world in terms of gold reserves.
However, some of our gold continues to remain overseas. Part of it America simply stole. At one time, the famous Soviet historian, an employee of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Professor Vladlen Sirotkin was involved in counting Russian money that was stuck in British and American banks during the First World War. According to his calculations, only from the end of 1915 to the end of 1916, the tsarist government sent several shipments of gold to the United States as collateral for the purchase of weapons and smokeless powder. But neither weapons nor gunpowder reached our country.
But the activity of these structures, as noted by Sirotkin in his memoirs, "artificially slowed down." In 2010, the Duma held hearings on the collection of foreign debts in favor of our country, but since then nothing has changed - no one intends to return the "tsar's gold" to us.
Crying money?
Moreover, information appeared in the media that the United States does not return its "gold debts" to other countries for the simple reason that they have … they simply no longer have gold! The US Federal Reserve has long parted with German gold and used it in its banking operations, said Vasily Yakimkin, an associate professor at the Faculty of Finance and Banking at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration: “There have been no German bullions in the United States for a long time. Therefore, the German leadership was persuaded at the highest level to cancel the decision to return the gold to Germany. It is clear that the Americans sold it and resold it."
German Sterligov, one of the first Russian millionaires, thinks in the same way: “The gold reserves from the territory of the USA have long been exported, including the German one. Fort Knox is empty, the common fund was stolen - it was not thrown like that even in Russia, even in the 90s. The real masters of the world have seized almost the entire gold reserve of mankind. But Fort Knox also held the gold reserves of America's satellite countries.
Even some experts in the United States admit this. For example, Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant for economic policy to the US Treasury Secretary in the Ronald Reagan administration, recently said: “No country that stores its gold in America will get it back. In the global precious metals market, it has long been suspected that banks, on behalf of the Federal Reserve Service, have used all of their reserves to drive down gold prices over the past few years.
In my opinion, most of the gold reserves were depleted sometime in 2011. By now, I think the American authorities no longer have gold reserves.”
How the Chinese were thrown
This incredible fact is confirmed by the story of the so-called Chinese tungsten gold. In October 2009, the US Treasury shipped a shipment of 5,600 gold bars to China, 400 ounces each. And then, for the first time in history, the Chinese instructed experts to check the ingots. And then a scandal broke out - the bars turned out to be fake!
As it turned out, they were made of tungsten covered with the finest amalgam of real gold. Bullion batch registration numbers indicated that the counterfeits had come from Federal Reserve banks during the time Bill Clinton was President. Experts estimated the damage from the so-called Clinton scam at $ 600 billion.
But maybe, according to some experts, there was no scam? And the fact that gold was replaced with tungsten was simply a forced measure designed to somehow hide the bankruptcy of the United States? That this could be exactly so is indirectly confirmed by the recent visit of the head of the US Treasury Steve Mnuchin to Fort Knox. He allegedly checked the state's gold reserves in this vault, which is officially considered the largest in the world, in just one day. But according to reports, gold should be more than 8 thousand tons for an amount exceeding $ 332 billion. So it is unclear how he could have checked its presence in such a short time.
But where, then, is all this gold? And isn't the current "golden blackmail" of the United States and England really a bluff?
Vladimir Malyshev
