by Rob Kirby
“Gold Finger - A New Take On Operation Grand Slam With A Tungsten Twist”
I’ve already reported on irregular physical gold settlements which occurred in London, England back in the first week of October, 2009. Specifically, these settlements involved the intermediation of at least one Central Bank [The Bank of England] to resolve allocated settlements on behalf of J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank – who DID NOT have the gold bullion that they had sold short and were contracted to deliver. At the same time I reported on two other unusual occurrences:
1] - irregularities in the publication of the gold ETF - GLD’s bar list from Sept. 25 – Oct.14 where the length of the bar list went from 1,381 pages to under 200 pages and then back up to 800 or so pages.
2] - reports of 400 oz. “good delivery” bricks of gold found gutted and filled with tungsten within the confines of LBMA approved vaults in Hong Kong.
Why Tungsten?
If anyone were contemplating creating “fake” gold bars, tungsten [at roughly $10 per pound] would be the metal of choice since it has the exact same density as gold making a fake bar salted with tungsten indistinguishable from a solid gold bar by simply weighing it.
Unfortunately, there are now more sordid details to report.
When the news of tungsten “salted” gold bars in Hong Kong first surfaced, many people
who I am acquainted with automatically assumed that these bars were manufactured in
China – because China is generally viewed as “the knock-off capital of the world”.
Here’s what I now understand really happened:
The amount of “salted tungsten” gold bars in question was allegedly between 5,600 and 5,700 – 400 oz – good delivery bars [roughly 60 metric tonnes].
This was apparently all highly orchestrated by an extremely well financed criminal operation.
Within mere hours of this scam being identified – Chinese officials had many of the perpetrators in custody.
And here’s what the Chinese allegedly uncovered:
Roughly 15 years ago – during the Clinton Administration [think Robert Rubin, Sir Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers] – between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day. I know folks who have copies of the original shipping docs with dates and exact weights of “tungsten” bars shipped to Ft. Knox.
The balance of this 1.3 million – 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten cache was also plated and then allegedly “sold” into the international market.Apparently, the global market is literally “stuffed full of 400 oz salted bars”.
Makes one wonder if the Indians were smart enough to assay their 200 tonne haul from the IMF?
2 comments:
Umm sorry, but the densities are not exactly the same. Tungsten is 19.3g/cm3 and gold is 19.32g/cm3, and since the conversion ratio is 28.3495231 grams for every ounce with a 400 ounce bar, that would produce a delta of 608.2 milligrams, large enough to be detectable by anyone with a decent scale. Not to mention the differences in their respective melting points, and ductilities, you could easily detect that discrepancy. Conspiracy theories by their very nature, grow more and more unlikely the larger it becomes. I have to call bullshit on this one.
perhaps it is easy to find out. but if bad bars had been insinuated into the supply at a very secure point, then i can see how they could go undetected for some time, especially if 1) there was no reason to suspect anything amiss and 2) not every
single bar is tested.
but, it could be just another big psyop.
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