Ukraine Admits Its Gold Is Gone: “There Is Almost No Gold Left In The Central Bank Vault”
Back in March, at a time when the IMF reported that Ukraine’s official gold holdings as of the end of February, so just as the State Department-facilitated coup against former president Victor Yanukovich was concluding, amounted to 42.3 tonnes or 8% of reserves…
… and notably under the previous “hated” president, Ukraine gold’s reserves had constantly increased hitting a record high just before the presidential coup…
… we reported of a strange incident that took place just after the Ukraine presidential coup, namely that according to at least one source, “in a mysterious operation under the cover of night, Ukraine’s gold reserves were promptly loaded onboard an unmarked plane, which subsequently took the gold to the US.” To wit:
Tonight, around at 2:00 am, an unregistered transport plane took off took off from Boryspil airport. According to Boryspil staff, prior to the plane’s appearance, four trucks and two cargo minibuses arrived at the airport all with their license plates missing. Fifteen people in black uniforms, masks and body armor stepped out, some armed with machine guns. These people loaded the plane with more than forty heavy boxes.
After this, several mysterious men arrived and also entered the plane. The loading was carried out in a hurry. After unloading, the plateless cars immediately left the runway, and the plane took off on an emergency basis.
Airport officials who saw this mysterious “special operation” immediately notified the administration of the airport, which however strongly advised them “not to meddle in other people’s business.”
Later, the editors were called by one of the senior officials of the former Ministry of Income and Fees, who reported that, according to him, tonight on the orders of one of the “new leaders” of Ukraine, all the gold reserves of the Ukraine were taken to the United States.
Needless to say there was no official confirmation of any of this taking place, and in fact our report, in which we mused if the “price of Ukraine’s liberation” was the handover of its gold to the Fed at a time when Germany was actively seeking to repatriate its own physical gold located at the bedrock of the NY Fed, led to the usual mainstream media mockery.
Until now.
In an interview on Ukraine TV, none other than the head of the Ukraine Central Bank made the stunning admission that “in the vaults of the central bank there is almost no gold left. There is a small amount of gold bullion left, but it’s just 1% of reserves.”
As Ukraina further reports, this stunning revelation means that not only has Ukraine been quietly depleting its gold throughout the year, but that the latest official number, according to which Ukraine gold was 8 times greater than the reported 1%, was fabricated, and that the real number is about 90% lower.
According to official statistics the NBU, the amount of gold in the vaults should be eight times more than is actually in stock. At the beginning of this month, the volume of gold was about $ 1 billion, or 8% of the total gold reserves. Now this is just one percent.
Of course, considering the official reserve data at the Central Bank has been clearly fabricated, one wonders just how long ago the actual gold “dmsplacement” took place.
We get some additional information from Rusila:
According to recent data, the value of Ukraine gold should be $988.7 million. That is the value of gold proportion of gold in gold reserves is 8%. If you believe Gontareva, it turns out there is a mere $123.6 million in gold remaining.
The figure is fantastic, considering that the amount of gold at the end of February (when the new authorities have already taken key positions) was $1.8 billion or 12% of the reserves.
In other words, since the beginning of the year gold reserves dropped almost 16 times. Gold stock in February were approximately 21 tons of gold, the presence of which was once proudly reported by Sergei Arbuzov, who led the NBU in 2010-2012.
So what happened to 20.8 tons of gold?
Explaining the dramatic reduction in the context of the hryvnia devaluation through gold sales is impossible. After all, 92% of the reserves of the National Bank is in the form of a foreign currency that is much easier to use to maintain hryvnia levels and cover current liabilities. Besides since March the international price of gold has plummeted.
Selling ??gold under such circumstances is a crime.
In fact it would be more expedient to increase gold reserves through currency conversion in precious metals.
But apparently the result is not due to someone’s negligence or carelessness. The gold reserve has been actively carted out of the country, as a result of the very vague economic and political prospects of Ukraine. Something similar happened to the gold reserves of the USSR – when the Gorbachev elite realized that perestroika is leading the country to the abyss, gold simply disappeared in an unknown direction.
The article’s conclusion:
As history shows, the reduction of the gold reserves in the context of an acute political crisis is usually preceded by the collapse of the state.
Oddly enough there was no official gold reduction just prior to the time when Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland was planning Yanukovich’s ouster, and as shown above, quite the contrary. It is a little more odd that it was during the period when Ukraine was “supported” by its western allies that several billion dollars worth of physical gold – the people’s gold – just “vaporized.”
In any event, now that the disappearance of Ukraine’s gold has been confirmed, perhaps it is time to refresh the “unconfirmed” story that a little after the current Ukraine regime took power the bulk of Ukraine’s gold was taken to the United States.
As of this writing, The NY Fed has still not answered our March request for a comment whether Ukraine’s gold has been redomiciled at the gold vault located some 80 feet below Liberty 33.
Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-18/ukraine-admits-its-gold-gone
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-10/was-price-ukraines-liberation-handover-its-gold-fed
Unfortunate Coincidences or Deliberate Actions by US to Steal Sovereign Nations’ Gold: Before It was Germany, Today It’s Ukraine & Tomorrow It’d be Whose Gold
I suspect from the airport loading report that the Fed took Ukraine’s 80(?) tons of gold to NY. Fair enough. The USA shelled out $5 billion to put the current Ukraine government in power and International currency wrestling makes MMA look girly.
Deaths run in the millions.
The Ukraine gold raid was a straw in the wind. I believe that we’re currently watching/participating in the biggest currency battle in world history: the USA is panicking about the dollar. Freaking out because it’s never played defense before.
The nonstop barefaced, hysterical, childish, transparently stupid lying and provocation of Russia and China we’ve seen lately is a symptom of desperation.
The U.S. is attacking Russia and China simultaneously because they’re simultaneously attacking the USA.
Putin declared war earlier this year stating, “We must de-dollarize the world”. Russia, a perennial defender against foreign attack, seized the initiative and attacked first. Challenging the dollar took immense personal courage.
Within a week a senior US Military official publicly called for someone to “put a bullet in Putin’s brain”.
For having the balls to publicly confront the Mighty Dollar Putin was voted “Most Powerful Man in the World” by Forbes Magazine’s upper-crust subscribers last year and again this week.
Dr. V. V. Putin is a professional intelligence specialist with black belts in the two toughest martial arts leagues in the world and a PhD in natural resource deployment.
He trained for years in the world’s biggest and most successful Intelligence operation, the NKVD. His professional specialty was assessing people.
He operated in Germany, is fluent in German, and his closest foreign friend is Gerhard Schroeder, the former Chancellor of Germany. Angela Merkel wants to mother him or fuck him. Or both. Watch her body language in their many videos together.
Germans know they’ve ceded too much power to the USA. The Russians gave the East its freedom in 1988(?).
The West wants its freedom, too. While our Western media watches Dr. Putin China is letting the air out of America’s tires.
The internationalization of the renminbi is the most visible of the 3-prong Chinese-Russian attack. Gold is the second prong. Special Drawing Rights are the third. All three prongs are now embedded in Uncle Sam’s ample buttocks.
1. Even Australia has warmly embraced the RMB and groveled for permission to trade it in Sydney — as has every nation on earth. The dollar’s market share decline has accelerated from 1% annually (the past 40 years) to over 2% this year: an increase of 100% in one year. If that trend carries into 2015, watch for a wobbly dollar.
2. Gold will double in price when the Fed can no longer make physical delivery of the bullion it currently sells for $1,000/oz. Chavez was warned (by either China or Russia, presumably) and publicly forced London to disgorge and repatriate Venezuela’s physical gold reserves. He was vilified as a madman in the Western financial press for doing so.
Germany requested repatriation of their gold reserves earlier this year and the Fed was unable to come up with the 80+(?) tons.
China and Russia — the world’s #1 and #2 gold producers — are buying gold on the open market. Last year China alone took delivery of more gold than the world produced. If it can force the USA to demonstrate that Fort Knox is empty (stated reserves 8,000 tons), it’s game over. Last year China granted Switzerland its first European FTA.
Swiss watches now stream into China minus the 59% duty that kept them out of reach of millions of consumers; Swiss tunnel-boring equipment is shipping in billion-dollar lots. Switzerland’s economy has never looked healthier.
Next week, by the wildest coincidence, the Swiss vote whether to restore physical gold bullion as the base for Its currency reserves. Switzerland is famous for financial ruthlessness. It’s also the only nation whose constitution requires that such initiatives be put to a vote by to all Swiss citizens.
A coincidence? Chinese Governments have been pulling off stunts like that since before Jesus showed up. Successes and failures were always analyzed by the Empire’s finest minds with its archival value foremost in their minds.
They archived thousands of such stratagems over the millennia and today the Chinese Government refers to those archives when beginning policy deliberations. That’s why the Court Historian has such prestige. His discerning eye, applied to an archive unparalleled in its breadth, depth, and subtlety, can save the Empire.
3. SDRs are taking off. At China’s insistence, the IMF denominated its current loans to Ukraine in SDRs — a synthetic currency of international settlement that is automatically revalued daily based on the previous day’s trade-weighted global currency transactions. It is less vulnerable to — and less controllable by — any single currency issuer. SDRs were invented in 1946 for Bretton Woods, by John Maynard Keynes.
The USA preferred the dollar the medium of international settlement — a decision they are beginning to rue.
Sic transit gloria currency.
Mr. Godfree Roberts is one of the frequent contributors for The 4th Media.
De-Dollarization Accelerates – China/Russia Complete Currency Swap Agreement
The last 3 months have seen Russia’s “de-dollarization” plans accelerate.First Gazprom clients shift to Euros and Renminbi, then the UK signs currency swap agreements with China, then NATO ally Turkey cuts ties and mulls de-dollarization, Switzerland jumps in the currency swap agreements, and BRICS create their own non-US-based funding vehicle, and then finally this week, Russia’s oligarchs have shifted cash holdings to Hong Kong.
But this week, as RT reports, Russian and Chinese central banks have agreed a draft currency swap agreement, which will allow them to increase trade in domestic currencies and cut the dependence on the US dollar in bilateral payments.
““The agreement will stimulate further development of direct trade in yuan and rubles on the domestic foreign exchange markets of Russia and China,” the Russian regulator said.
In early July, the Central Bank’s chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina said Moscow and Beijing were close to reaching an agreement on conducting swap operations in national currencies to boost trade. The deal was later discussed during her trip to China.
President Vladimir Putin, during his visit to Shanghai in May, said cooperation between Russian and Chinese banks was growing, and the two sides were set to continue developing the financial infrastructure.
“Work is underway to increase the amount of mutual payments in national currencies, and we intend to consider new financial instruments,” Putin said after talks with President Xi Jinping.
It appears the deal is done…
The Russian and Chinese central banks have agreed a draft currency swap agreement, which will allow them to increase trade in domestic currencies and cut the dependence on the US dollar in bilateral payments.
“The draft document between the Central Bank of Russia and the People’s Bank of China on national currency swaps has been agreed by the parties,” and is at the stage of formal approval procedures, ITAR-TASS quotes the Russian regulator’s office on Thursday.
The Russian Central Bank is not giving precise details on the size of the currency swaps, nor when it will be launched. It says this will depend on demand.
According to the bank, the agreement will serve as an additional instrument for ensuring international financial stability. Also, it will offer the possibility to obtain liquidity in critical situations.
“The agreement will stimulate further development of direct trade in yuan and rubles on the domestic foreign exchange markets of Russia and China,” the Russian regulator said.
Currently, over 75 percent of payments in Russia-China trade settlements are made in US dollars, according to Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.
* * *
And as we have explained repeatedly in the past, the further the west antagonizes Russia, and the more economic sanctions it lobs at it, the more Russia will be forced away from a USD-denominated trading system and into one which faces China and India.